10/11/2020 This Crazy Advent We're In Now

This painting is by Andrea Kowch  http://andreakowch.com/

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Regarding Time: It’s been about a million months since the quarantine started. It will be an at least one epoch if not two, until a vaccine is available to quell it. Election Day is here now (I’ve already voted, have you?) yet it feels as if it will never be done and gone. Even when Nov 3 arrives we could be in for more epochs of anxious and angry waiting as ballots are tallied, argued over, recounted, all while lawyers and politicians fight and scrap.

These are Crazy Times. When you your anticipate some kind of good ending, that’s hope. When you don’t what’s going to happen, that’s Advent. I guess we are in Crazy Advent Time now.

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Remember back the olden days when we had one or two crises at a time, and we all talked about it for a couple days or even weeks? I sit down here to write about one horrible thing; they literally took breast-feeding babies out of their mom’s arms at the border. Trump PAID those 400 people at his “rally” yesterday- where did he get the $? In my district some voters received ballots that don’t have my Democratic candidates on them. Senator Ron Johnson says Covid isn’t that big a deal, then he got it, he’s not said much lately, apparently one of his kids-in-law owns a corporate jet on which he flies Dad so RoJo doesn’t have to mix with the hoi-poi. Friends went to a demonstration last night against the cop shooting of Alvin Cole. Friends left at 7;30 with people leaving in orderly fashion, as heavy armor including a tank rolled into the area. Who's instigating violence?

 It’s Just This Crazy. Being a reasonably sensitive and caring person in this time is like living with bees in your head.

I think this is the part where I should tell you what to think and how to address all this. Hah. I don’t know.

In 2018 I wrote a sermon about Julian of Norwich. I think of Julian often  when I’m overwhelmed. This time we are in is not as horrendous as her time was. She spent her adult life considering how to respond to suffering and loss and craziness. Maybe you’d like to read my old sermon. Right Here. 

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Goofy News: I mentioned that I was going to wear colorful clothes for a week to see if it made any difference in my daily life. It didn’t. But Judy suggested I feature fashion photos of “what I wore this week.” Which seems like a good way to lighten a mood.

Monday – I met some friends outside and this worked.

Tuesday I forgot to take a photo, but this is the shirt I wore.

Reaping nasturtium pods for home-grown capers. Orange pants are camouflage when sneaking up on nasturtiums.

We hiked at High Cliffs State Park. Note my sporty clip-on glasses.

My daughter lived in Egypt one summer. That’s the Arabic alphabet on the scarf!

A casual Saturday.

I’m ready to wear a black t-shirts again. Thinking about what to wear every day was above my paygrade.

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After uncovering the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Whitmer this week, the FBI released a list of the white nationalist men accused of this crime. I grew up in Michigan. I perused that list to see if I would recognize any of the names. I don’t.

But isn’t this telling about what’s real and what’s not real in our nation?

To live in a propaganda state means one absorbs what the media puts in front of us. We learn to be anxious or afraid or racist around whomever the state/media designates as “scary.” Adult Black men and women. Asian people, no, I should say people of Asian heritage. Anyone with tawny skin speaking a language we don’t know - as if most of us could recognize Arabic from Urdu from Vietnamese. People speaking Spanish. A woman wearing hijab. A person with disfigurements. A person talking to themselves with what might be mental illness.

Most of us who are not the above, are NOT anxious around scruffy white men. Even though, right now, the FBI is telling us that white nationalist terrorist groups are our most serious threat.

We need to readjust our brains. The danger isn’t where the stereotypes insisted it was. It is exactly this close – that when we see a list of white national terrorism suspects, we scan the list.

This close.

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And this. If one has too many green tomatoes. Ahem

One can make a very tasty bread by using your banana bread recipe … but … replace the mushed banana with diced/smooshed green tomatoes.