Annie Dillard and Jim Bakker

 As one who feels closest to God in nature and silence, I am firmly in Annie Dillard’s camp. It’s probably 30 years since I last read one of her books. I think it’s time to reread— now with a 79 year old mind. This is an excerpt from an article in the WaPo today.   https://wapo.st/4hPY6iA

“Dillard’s great project, through her nonfiction books, essays, poems, novels, unpublished notebooks, watercolor paintings and live-wire conversation — not to mention her voracious reading, long walks, beachcombing, enthusiastic dancing and spirited sing-alongs — was to learn as much as she could about God. Unlike those metaphysical seekers who content themselves with the study of scriptures and other secondhand sources, Dillard examined God through the world he made, the way it does and does not work, the things revealed and the things left mysterious.

She concluded, among other things,.that most of us are not serious when we talk about God and, bless our hearts, don’t realize how unserious we are. In perhaps her most-quoted summation of this insight, from her essay collection “Teaching a Stone to Talk,” she wrote: “It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”
Religions profess to believe in an infinite, all-powerful God, omniscient, beyond time — and in the same breath reduce him to the pages of a book, an inscription on marble tablets, a hired gun to train on one’s enemies, a genie summoned to grant wishes.

Religions profess to believe in an infinite, all-powerful God, omniscient, beyond time — and in the same breath reduce him to the pages of a book, an inscription on marble tablets, a hired gun to train on one’s enemies, a genie summoned to grant wishes.
Bakker’s formative years were immersed in the Assemblies of God, which taught of an unbridled, immanent, miraculous deity, an unpredictable God who might ignite a believer’s heart or bestow the gift of tongues without warning. But by the time he and his wife, Tammy Faye, came to prominence under the auspices of broadcaster Pat Robertson, Bakker had become an exponent of the so-called prosperity gospel, with its modest God of tollbooth transactions”

Midterm Election Posts (Lake County Ohio WEAL blog)

Early voting began yesterday in Ohio. Three STATISTA graphics provide a good framework for thinking about the midterms.

Presidents and Mid-Term Elections

This great graphic confirms my long held theory that voters vote against the greater of two evils. I formulated that view when Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater. The pundits said that the Republican party would never recover.  I simply saw them repudiating the Republican Party represented by Goldwater. 

Essentially in the midterms we almost always repudiated the party in power as the greater of two evils. We have absorbed the need for checks and balance into our voting for political parties even when we are skeptical of both parties. Those who are not rigid party voters do the work for us.

If I were campaigning door to door I would carry copies of this post, tell people about my theory of voting, and ask for their thoughts, and then carefully listen to them. 

Party Affiliation: Countercyclical Tendencies

 As seen in presidential approval ratings, Obama was a more popular president, achieving 51 percent approval at the end of his term. Both Biden and Trump proved less popular, at annual average approval ratings between 39 percent and 44 percent. 

Note that Republican maximized their affiliation during the Biden term at 46%, and that the Democratic affiliation has always been between 44 and 49%. That means the Democrats problem is their failure to mobilize their base, while Trump has done a good job of mobilizing the Republican base. 

Democratic Party Affiliation Reaches a Decade High

The affiliation measure for each party is a combination of those who affiliate with the party and those who lean. Essentially the Democratic party lost people during the Biden administration. 

When did compassion become a sin?

 Compassion and empathy are now seen as bad things. The first time I heard about this understanding of these traits that is rapidly spreading in MAGA circles was a quote from Elon Musk—“ "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy“.   This idea is now even supported by none other than Robert Barron.    

Hannah Arendt warned “ The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.  I think we’re pretty close to barbarism right now. 

Reactions? Thoughts ?  

Article from The Atlantic

https://tinyurl.com/msk7f4ma

Capital Punishment

By now everyone has heard of Christa Pike's botched execution in Tennessee. I think it is nightmarish that they tried to kill her twice, and she is still alive, barely. 

I have been against capital punishment since 1959. I was 8 years old then. How the subject even got on my radar was the Charles Starkweather story. Charles Starkweather - Wikipedia

"Charles Raymond Starkweather (November 24, 1938 – June 25, 1959)^[2] was an American spree killer who murdered eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming between December 1957 and January 1958, when he was nineteen years old."

This was the first major news story I can remember. I won't go into all the details here, if you want you can read the Wikipedia article.  I actually didn't know the details, most of the news went over my head.  I did know that Starkweather was "on the lam", everyone did. His path went through our area on his way to Wyoming, where he was apprehended. It was a scary time.  My parents usually didn't lock our doors, or take the keys out of our vehicles.  But during this time they locked up.  However Dad left his keys in his pickup, saying he didn't want Starkweather coming to the door asking for them.

Living "Yes"

This is my homily for today, the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A.  Today's readings are here.

Beatification of Archbishop Fulton Sheen

 I can say that I sorta knew a saint; well, I saw him on tv is closer to the truth.  My mom liked his program, we watched it sometimes in the 1960s. I think by that time some of the episodes were reruns.  But they were short; I think 30 minutes.  To the extent that I was paying attention as a kid, I thought he was somewhat entertaining, once in a while he'd crack a joke. I still would find him preferable to present day televangelists.

Here is the coverage from America Magazine: Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen declared ‘Blessed’ at beatification Mass in St. Louis - America Magazine

Children's Lectionary

I see in the comments to a recent post a short conversation about children's liturgies.  As it happens, we've recently restarted a Liturgy of the Word for Children (LWC) at our parish that had gone dormant during COVID.  There is a special Lectionary for LWC; it strikes me as considerably easier to understand than what we use in church.