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It is understandable if you feel without hope about our nation’s future sometimes. Armed troops trained not in policing the home front but in killing America’s enemies have been sent by the president to patrol the streets of several liberal cities. Universities are punished for disagreeing with the president. Even the Smithsonian is now censored if it records history in a way in which the president disapproves.

If you are understandably discouraged right now, do what it takes to rest and heal. But also know this: When the time for ethical action arises, there is greatness deep within you that will emerge if you will let it.

How do I know this? I am thinking of my own role models for activism. Gandhi and Martin Luther King were shot down without pity, but not before they illumined this world with a peace that could not be shaken by hate or tyranny. How can we call these people role models if we wither when placed into the same situations they conquered?

So, think for a moment about your own role models for courage and justice. If they had lived in comfortable times we might never have heard of any of them:

Malala Yousafzai has inspired countless women to blossom into fulness even after she was shot in the face in an attempt to silence her. She found an inextinguishable life and joy in the midst of such deadly threats. If the time comes, we can, too.

The joy and peace of Thich Nhat Hanh were not developed in a pleasant retreat center. They emerged out of the horrors of the Viet Nam War. When you consider his peaceful smile, do not forget it was born like a phoenix out of unspeakable violence. If necessary, we can find peace in hard times, too.

The compassion of Arch Bishop Romero did not emerge from a quiet monastery but out of death squads of El Salvador. We’re all going to die, the only question is whether we will die of something or for something.

If any of these examples are people you have looked up to, there must be a spark within you of that same courage, peace and joy that is deeper than the storms we will be passing through. If our role models could find peace and joy in horrific times, so can we.

If you have loved the great souls of humankind, you must have some measure of that same greatness within you or you could not recognize it in others. Do what you need to do to get through the initial shock of what looks like a national crisis, but if the time for ethical greatness comes, remember this as well: You can do this.

1. Dobson stressed family values over universal human rights.
2. Dobson replaced the idea of a new humanity where no one is defined by their fleshly condition (Galatians 3:28) with patriarchal and heterosexist domination.
3. Dobson replaced a message that could embrace all humankind with Eurocentrism and appeals to Western civilization.
4. Dobson called people to childlike obedience instead of mature responsibility.
5. Dobson saw the ultimate arbiter of morality to be violence (spanking) instead of communication.
6. Dobson taught allegiance to the church over allegiance to values that transcend human religion.
7. Dobson replaced the prophetic call to grow and change with a commitment to unchanging traditional values.

“Doom scrolling” is a term for the compulsion to scan negative stories on social media.
There are lots of theories as to why we voluntarily wander into the quicksand of bad news. We have evolved to be vigilant for danger. We know there are problems in our world and by fixating on the threats we may feel we are preparing ourselves to better cope with them. But simply dwelling on threats does not address the root problems, and may actually weaken our ability to cope.
Some have suggested that we set a time limit for scanning negative news and then turn to solution based information. In other words after we have a sense of the problems, it can be helpful to look up activist groups working to correct the problem.
Ross Perot might have been wrong about a lot of things, but he was right on target when he said, “The activist is not the (one) who says the river is dirty. The activist is the (one) who cleans up the river.”
Molly Ivins gave similar advice, “Listen to the people who are talking about how to fix what’s wrong, not the ones who just work people into a snit over the problems. Listen to the people who have ideas about how to fix things, not the ones who just blame others.”
Sometimes we just have to remind ourselves that reality is offline. The internet can become an echo chamber for every issue imaginable. Grassroots community organizations have the advantage of focusing on solutions and also giving us a community that supports us in the real world.

Perhaps it is time to declare that we no longer believe the words on the Statue of Liberty:
“Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!””
Perhaps we should not invite “the huddled masses yearning to breath free” to our land if they are going to end up in Alligator Alcatraz once they get here.
Perhaps America now prefers the “storied pomp” of empire to the message of world wide liberation. Perhaps we should give the Statue of Liberty back to France, or melt it down into commemorative coins of our all powerful president. Perhaps we should stop pretending to be hold up a “lamp beside the golden door.”
Or, perhaps, it is time for those who love liberty to clear our streets of military occupation. Perhaps it is time for “the land of the free” to replace prisons with homes. Perhaps, it is time for true patriots to renounce empty idol worship of the flag and commit ourselves to the democratic republic for which that flag stands.
You cannot love America and hate its people.

Criminalizing poverty is a natural result of getting our values from property rights and from running our nation like a business.
We have heard from some politicians that harsher laws will keep us safe, but, as we have built higher walls and brought more violence to bear against the poor, we have not felt safer. In fact, “the land of the free” already puts more of its people behind bars than any other nation. And, still, we still grow more fearful with every passing day.
No one wants to see people living under our bridges and sleeping in our alleys and in the doorways of our cities, But, policies of cruelty toward the unsheltered have not, and cannot, make our cities safer. Criminalizing homelessness does nothing to eliminate the causes of poverty and greatly aggravates its symptoms.
Running a nation like a business will never work because the poor cannot afford to buy anything. They are not shareholders nor customers. So, the United States is already a police state for the poor and homeless. And, as laws have increased the distances between us, Americans have only grown more terrified.
If, as some politicians claim, those without homes are a health risk, the answer isn’t to force them to die outside of our sight. Such cruel indifference will not make our world one bit safer. And sending people without housing to jail will leave them with even fewer coping options than before.
But there is a better way. We are one human family. Our destinies are interwoven whether we like it or not. The answer to poverty is better education and a living wage, not stricter austerity measures. The answer to disease is universal health care, not gated communities. The answer to homelessness is housing, not incarceration.

It was chilling to see the Republican “wanted poster” of Rep. James Talarico.
Some Republicans are claiming James is guilty of “dereliction of duty” because he is one of the Democratic leaders who have fled the state to prevent the Gerrymandering away the votes of districts that are predominately Black or Brown.
This is a personal issue for us at Saint Andrews because James came up through our church preschool and is a faithful member of our community. James embodies the love that has matured into a passion for justice for all people. In fact, it is embarrassing to speak on the same event as James because I sound like the politician and he sounds like the preacher.
James often credits our church for his prophetic faith but I can tell you he has always had a passion for justice that comes from his own heart. Even as a small child James broke up fights and negotiated fairness with the other children. Far from a dereliction of duty, it could be said that James has fled the state for the same reason Moses had to flee Egypt. He feels he is chartered with a message to the Pharaoh’s of our day, “Let (all) my people go!”
James is the opposite of a Christian nationalist. His faith calls him to love and serve others regardless of their faith or lack thereof. It is a strange time in America when Christian nationalists say they love America but then are hateful to any who are different from them. James represents a kind Christianity that not only hears Christ’s message of love, but wants to embody that love in service to ALL people.

There was a time early in my ministry where no one had a bad word to say about me. I didn’t realize that my supposed popularity was based on blending into the hierarchies of oppression and not standing up for anyone.
My silence in the pulpit about controversial issues meant I was a guilty bystander to the church’s abuse of women, the LGBTQ community, and to non-Christians in general.
Eventually, I learned if you truly love others you have to be honest enough to risk losing their approval. Being nice is not necessarily being kind.

Unlike pure reason, wisdom is experiential. Experiential wisdom requires that we doubt and sometimes make mistakes.
Belief alone does not necessarily lead us to wisdom. Wisdom must gestate. Confusion and restlessness can be the pangs of new birth. Even our worst mistakes provide broken shards to make a beautiful mosaic out of our lives.
Doubt is just as important to the life of faith as is belief. Belief and doubt are the two wings that, in tandem, give our minds the capacity of flight.

I love the kind of religion where people can gather to ask the great questions of life, but detest the forms of religion that pretend they have found all the answers.
I detest the kind of religion that place the sandaled foot of the Savior on the throat of the culture’s scapegoats, but I love the forms of religion that humbly serve the world without needing to preach.
I love the forms of religion where people can come together to celebrate ordinary life as a miraculous gift, but detest the forms of religion that can only find the sacred in the supernatural.
I detest the kinds of religion that bribe us with promises of a gated heaven, but love the forms of religion that bet it all on love.

The word “God” is perhaps the most dangerous word in the English language. I can’t think of another word that so completely makes a room full of people believe they are sharing the same beliefs when, in fact, every person in the room means something different.
I do not believe the symbol “God” is essential to the life of reverence. When people do use that word, it seems to me, the symbol “God” usually refers either to one’s own quest for love or one’s own pursuit of power.
If some some people in this culture use the word “God” to refer to an imagined white male on a golden throne, their religion may consist of little more than a theological mask for the sins of racism, sexism and classism. Religion that worships God as power may simply lift national and cultural injustices to a divine status.
But if, by “God” one means a personification of the tie that binds us ALL together, the word can give emotional texture to an abstract idea of unity. If one finds the sacred, not the the crafted idols of theology, but in the living faces of imperfect and struggling people, and in the frenzied pulse of nature, then the symbol “God” can be a poetic representation of the felt “heart” of a life lived in love.
What is important in any symbol is not the image it conjures in our heads, but the experience of reverence and interconnectedness it reveals in our hearts. The iconoclastic destruction of our religious images is almost as important to the life of love as is the creativity that crafts religious imagery in the first place.