LENTEN MEDITATION: 2020

Lord have mercy.

Have mercy on me, my God, as I wake this morning with such bitterness in my heart as I have rarely felt: bitterness toward my fellow palefaces, the majority of whom look to be lurching toward turning our country into a land of Judases, each of whom might well horrify the original with their treachery. ‘The brave’ are a decreasing number among us and too many, when they return here, wind up a shameful on-the-street testimony as to how this majority-coward nation treats the few brave among us!
Most of us appear to be cowards who don’t even want to imagine lives different in some really important ways: less filled with ‘stuff’ and more filled with nurturing relationships with one another, animals and, yes, whole ecosystems as well. Economic systems that put back into the earth at least as much as they extract. Indeed, too many of my fellow aging male palefaces seem to feel their manhood depends on maintaining and even on doubling down on destructively extractive ways with the earth’s resources.
Jesus, I believe you forgave even Judas, for wasn’t he also one who ‘knew not what he did’ until it was too late? Do I then need to forgive today’s Judases who seek to betray our country and our planet on the same ground? And yes, I do remember that forgiveness is as much for the forgiver as for the forgiven.

Christ have mercy.

A majority of this country, Father, still calls itself ‘Christian’. Too many of them act like anything but. They’re interested not in Your…