Praying for others

While I'm certain it wasn't his intention, Rev. Anthony Ruff OSB, the editor of the Pray Tell blog, induced a twinge of guilt in me with his recent post on praying for the dead:

What a friend we have/had in ...?

  I have been lumbering (as opposed to racing) through the Why We issue of Commonweal. I have one more essay to go, but I just skimmed it to make sure it won't make a liar of me.
 I realized this morning that Jesus never appears, as a reason for coming, going or staying. Chesterton gets some attention. Charles Davis, Flannery O'Connor, Mary, even a truly detestable human being,  are mentioned, but the name of the Lord never appears.
 A Baptist magazine couldn't do an issue like Commonweal's without Jesus appearing all over the place. Part of the collective authors' reticence may be a Catholic thing. What with "name in vain" and "every knee shall bend" banged into our heads, Catholics tend to say Christ when they mean Jesus, which is OK, but it's a title, not a name.
 But it is striking, if you think about it, that most of the essayists cover the accidents. I'd say only one gets close to the essence of the Catholic faith, but he says it's too boring to think about. The rest is doctrine or execrable 1960s music (now that is boring) or a certain aura that seems to migrate from ancient cathedrals to execrable 1960s church architecture for some but not for others.
 If I had been writing one of the essays, I would have done the same thing myself. So I do appreciate what the essayists have done. It's only looking at them as a whole that I can see who, or Who, is missing. And that's kind of odd, since  Jesus is why there is a Church. If not for him nobody would talk about coming, going or staying.

Buffalo whistle blower

We've looked a couple of times now at the abuse-transparency scandal swirling around Bishop Richard Malone of the Buffalo, NY diocese.  First Things' Web Exclusives blog has now published a first-person account by Siobhan M. O'Connor, Malone's former executive assistant and the primary leaker to local media.  O'Connor describes how the scales fell from her eyes as she watched her boss pose for statues as the Most Reverend Transparency while allegedly being anything but.

It may be worth reflecting that without a local press corps, nobody hears the whistle blow.  If I can make a Giving Tuesday recommendation: subscribe to your local newspaper.

Another quick thought on Christ the King

We're all immigrants.  We're all tramping along in the caravan.  None of us has birthright citizenship in the kingdom of heaven.  We immigrate to Jesus's kingdom - by our baptism, our confirmation, and the choices we make in our daily lives.

But if we choose Jesus's kingdom, the gates are open to us.  Jesus doesn't turn away anyone from his kingdom - in fact, he wants everyone to choose citizenship in his kingdom, and expects us to invite others to join the caravan.

I wish American Christians would reflect on this, when considering what our immigration policies should be.  How much more ungenerous than Jesus are we permitted to be?

Priests, prophets, kings

This is my homily for today, the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, aka Christ the King.  The readings for today are here. 

Staying or Leaving: What is the Question?

Various declarations of departure from the Catholic Church, especially because of the sexual abuse of children and accusations of cover-up, have come with strong moral arguments. Who wants to be part of....? I get that.

But sitting at Mass this morning, I had a perverse thought. In a very good sermon on Christ the King (would you believe it?), G.K. Chesterton was quoted: (appoximately) "Do people who deny original sin, believe in the universality of the Immaculate Conception."

In the vacant moments between the end of the sermon, the collection, and the offertory procession contemplating Chesterton's joke, I was confronted by a devilish question:

Did I think, she asked in a whispery voice, that American Catholics who are leaving the Church over child sexual abuse ought to leave the United States over the starvation of 85,000 Yemeni children? After all, she said, U.S. cooperation with the Saudi bombing of Yemen and the interdiction of humanitarian relief has led to those deaths. Why aren't American Catholics morally troubled by that? Why aren't they leaving for Canada?

What does that have to do with Original Sin? Chesterton also said (approximately) that original sin is a theological truth with reams of empirical evidence. True, in the United States as in the Catholic Church. What is the moral difference for those exiting the Church but not the U.S.?

The congregation was duly incensed, and I snapped back to attention.

Evangelism Gone Awry

Some of you have probably seen this news item:

"An American missionary who was shot dead with arrows by a tribe he wanted to convert on a remote Indian island wrote a letter to his parents asking them not to be 'mad at them or at God' if he was killed. 

John Allen Chau, 26, was shot dead with arrows last week by tribesman when he arrived at North Sentinel Island - one of the world's most isolated regions in India's Andaman islands that is off-limits to visitors.

He had paid local fishermen to take him there before venturing alone in a kayak to the shore on November 15. Chau was shot by the Sentinelese tribe after arriving on the island, according to a fisherman who helped him get there.

Chau was able to safely return to the boat but made his way back to the island the following day, which is when the fishermen said they later saw the tribe dragging his body away."

Of cabbage heads and kings

  Pope Pius XI established the Solemnity of Christ the King in 1925. The creation of the feast is linked, in Catholic lore, to Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and the general totalitarian drift of Europe.
 But that's writing history back-to-front. Stalin had just gained power in 1922, and Hitler had just gotten out of prison in 1924, where he served eight months for the "Beer Hall Putsch," the serio-comic effort to overthrow the government. Mussolini chose 1925 to drop the pretense of democracy and acknowledge that he was a dictator.
The decision to honor Christ as king seems to be less prescient than nostalgic. The Habsbergs, Romanovs, Hohenzollerns and  Osmans had all lost their thrones as a result of the First World War. The Roman pontiff must have been starting to feel lonely as one of the few remaining absolute monarchs.
  It wasn't going to get better for kings. Ten years later, Edward VIII chose an American divorcee over the crown of England.
 In his encyclical establishing the feast, Pius XI also specifically cited anti-clericalism as one of the reasons for needing the solemnity.
 Things haven't gone well for kings in more than 100 years. I tried to attach to this a photo of King Farouk, the deposed monarch of Egypt cavorting voluminously on the Isle of Capri in a swimming suit straining to hold him in. Fortunately, if you are eating, I couldn't figure out how to give you a look. But the photo, in 1953, is indelibly etched in my brain and is the first thing I think of when the word "king" appears.
 Democracy is currently going through a rough patch. China, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Turkey and the United States have all turned to authoritarians. Yet none of them suggested bringing back kings.
 Things haven't gotten better for clericalism, either, come to think of it.
 In his encyclical, Quas Primas,  Pius XI did a workmanlike job of finding biblical references to Christ as a king. But he had to slide over the indications that God didn't think a king was a good idea for Israel. When the people asked Samuel for a king, Samuel was "displeased," and when he talked it over with God, the response wasn't a feast:
 (The Lord said in answer): "Grant the people's every request. It is not you they reject, they are rejecting me as their king. As they have treated me constantly from the day I brought them out of Egypt  to this day, deserting me and worshiping strange gods, so do they treat you, too."
 So the Israelites got their kings. Saul was... meh. David had his moments, and Solomon showed promise, but it was nearly all downhill from there. I mean, it's not a line you would want to fit Jesus into at first glance.
 It's a good idea to one Sunday a year to remind autocrats, their admirers and sycophants that worldly rule doesn't last forever and is subject to rule from above.  We need a cold bath of humility in high places now, more than ever.  But sticking a crown on Jesus doesn't seem like the best way, in this day and age, to make that point. Certainly not if you ever saw Farouk in exile.

Wonderful commentary on Thomas Keating and Centering Prayer

Tim Shriver has written a column about Thomas Keating and CP at America's website that explains CP better than I could.  The couple who led one of my CP groups were both Episcopalian. They developed a personal relationship with Keating over a period of several years. Eventually they became Catholic-- about the time I left. I have recently returned to CP and it's already making a difference. I went to a new group on Monday. I felt I was home when I saw this couple there also. They had "retired" from leading CP a few years ago and the only other time I had bumped into them was when voting in 2016...

On Oct. 26 …Thomas Keating …died at the age of 95 …. his loss is … felt by thousands who … counted him as a gentle guide to our most personal challenges and a soaring guide to the aspirations of the spiritual life. …he left us a powerful but unlikely solution to our current national crisis: centering prayer.

That slamming door rattled the plates

 Melinda Henneberger has left, or tried to leave,  Mother Church. She slammed the door in an article in USA Today where she now hangs out, somewhat. She used to be in Commonweal and has been in The New York Times and briefly had a blog,  so I have been familiar, off and on, with her work. I respect it, if not being at the  fan level. So it hurts when she says she is outta here.
 She didn't say where she is going. That is one thing. Every time I think of taking my bat and ball and going home I realize there is no home out there.
 I don't think it takes a heck of a lot of courage to walk away from the Church these days. In fact, it may be too easy. It also doesn't help. It doesn't help those of us who found Jesus in the Church and are afraid we will lose him if we get too far away. It doesn't help those who, feeling what Henneberger feels, feel like walking, too.  It doesn't help those who need an anchor.  I doubt that it helps Jesus, either.
 But I know why she feels as she does.

Two Takes on Centering Prayer

Our archdiocesan newspaper, The Catholic Voice, features a column on spirituality by writer Connie Rossini, which I sometimes read.  As a sometime practitioner of centering prayer,  I was interested in this issue's column, entitled "Father Keating and the Controversy surrounding Centering Prayer". Since Ms. Rossini has discussed many aspects of prayer, I was surprised at the negative tone of the article. Her concern is centered around the thought management she felt was implied in centering prayer, "making the mind blank", saying that this is found in Eastern meditation techniques and that this type of meditation is not prayer. From the article:

Louis Armstrong's vault

  I interviewed Louis Armstrong exactly once, in the early 60s. He talked to me between sets in Evansville, Ind., having come down U.S. 41 with his band on a bus from Chicago. "Are you tired?" I asked.
 "Man, I've been tired since I was 13,"  he replied.
 I've stolen that line more than once.
 One thing I asked was whether there was going to be a volume two of his autobiography.  A first volume, Satchmo, was recently in paperback, It ended with Armstrong coming up the river from New Orleans. (There was an earlier autobiography I didn't even know about.) He said there was "something" in a bank vault -- in New Orleans or New York, he was vague about which -- that would come out "sometime."
 Turns out, there was no volume two of Satchmo -- a nickname Armstrong didn't particularly like. There was something better.

 A rousing sample is in today's New York Times. It is behind the Times's semi-permeable paywall, but if you can get it, it's well worth reading.   Armstrong saved his letters, essays and even jokes. He made home recordings of himself talking and playing along with other artists' records. He made collages. That last may sound odd, but so did my mother and aunt; it must have been a generational thing.
 Anyhow, all of this has been digitized by The Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens, thanks to a grant from Robert F. Smith. And, thanks to modern technology, the Times can add sound and big photos to a description/review of the collection.
 The collection is available at the Museum's Web site. We may now know all the things that Armstrong in his day dismissed as "something in a bank vault." Quite a guy.
 Incidentally, I had been told he didn't like to be called "Louie," so I practiced saying "Louis." After listening to him play for an hour, when I got to him to talk, "Mr. Armstrong" popped out naturally.
 For those who can't breach the Times wall, and for the whole world in general, here is a taste of what made me call him Mister. Real good trumpeters today can imitate that opening 15 seconds or so, but they say that when Armstrong made the recording real good trumpeters couldn't figure out how he did it.

No Pass for Sass

 Does anybody here feel outrage about Jim Acosta’s White House press pass? I don’t. But I had access to CNN for a little while last night and got the impression that the press pass is major news on a level with a Stormy Daniels comment.

 Not only is CNN suing the President of the United States (whatever you think of him) to get Acosta’s press pass restored, but all the other big news outlets including Fox (!) have joined CNN in court. Take that back: It looks bigger than Stormy Daniels.

 I’ve quoted here before, I think, the late Dean J. L. O’Sullivan’s observation that Washington has ruined more good journalists than booze. The White House press corps is a good example of that, although the National Press Club, where the elite of press and politics pretend to like each other and too often do, is worse. But it happens in small towns, too. In my first reporting job I worked in a two-newspaper town, and television news was just beginning to be a factor. Someone had a bright idea to start a press club where we could all have lunch and invite in speakers and be fat and happy together. We had an informal meeting at my paper where, with no quibbles, we decided unanimously that we didn’t want to be any part of that.

And Guess Who's Coming for Thanksgiving

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged. An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!

114K

7:44 AM - Nov 12, 2018

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82.8K people are talking about this

 

82.8 people are being totally misinformed. Although Trump and Red Tide Rick Scott have spoken of votes from "nowhere," the real nowhere includes overseas and military votes that are not only not counted until last but do not even have to be at the elections office before the close of voting on election day.

 

Red Tide Rick, the governor who wants to be a senator, has been governor of this state for eight years. The governor can remove a county election supervisor for almost any cause he wants to dream up on a boozy night. Gov. Red Tide Rick is now suing two election supervisors who, among other things, know the law while he doesn't.

 

As for the other fool purveying this misinformation, what else do you expect? If the National Football League had not had the wisdom to keep him out of an owner's box, he would want to freeze the score at the last time he was ahead and blame a bad referee's decision.  I hope someone tells the GIs, whom he looooooves, that he doesn't want to count their votes.

Ministry and excess things

People have things they don't need, and sometimes other people need those things.  So here are three anecdotes on the intersection of surplus items and ministry.

Vatican Stops US Bishops Voting on Sexual Abuse UPDATED!

Vatican tells U.S. bishops not to vote on proposals to tackle sexual abuse, spurns lay and civil investigations

The Vatican stymied a plan by America’s Catholic leaders to confront sexual abuse, insisting in a surprise directive on Monday morning that America’s bishops postpone their effort to hold bishops more responsible in the abuse cases that have scourged the church.

At the same time, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States suggested that bishops should not look to lay people in the church or law enforcement to confront the church’s sexual abuse crisis.

Thus the bishops of America’s 196 Catholic dioceses and archdioceses were left scrambling

We are only beginning to make sense of all this:

First impressions and truth

In a post-election post last week,  I had mentioned that, nationally, the outcome appeared to be a bit of a draw, with Democrats retaking the House, and Republicans gaining some ground in the Senate.  I wrote that the results indicated that President Trump had neither been repudiated nor confirmed by the country.  In writing that, I was attempting to summarize and interpret the gist of what I had gleaned from news reports and commentary I had consumed in the day or so after the election.

In a post at National Review's The Corner blog, Yuval Levin makes an important point: what we were given in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's vote consisted of 'insta-analysis': conclusions based on what was known, visible and reported at that time.

Remembrance Day

Today at Mass we observed "Remembrance Day." That is the title the UK and other anglo-phone countries give to what we call "Veteran's Day," the day Americans remember veterans from all of our wars. Remembrance Day, on the other hand, is specific to World War I and the millions who died fighting.  Though WWI has been called the war to end all wars, it seems to many that it is the war that began the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries; in fact "The War That Never Ended."

The NYTimes has this sobering story of what some fear will happen if we fail to remember.

 "The anniversary comes amid a feeling of gloom and insecurity as the old demons of chauvinism and ethnic division are again spreading across the Continent. And as memory turns into history, one question looms large: Can we learn from history without having lived it ourselves?

"In the aftermath of their cataclysmic wars, Europeans banded together in shared determination to subdue the forces of nationalism and ethnic hatred with a vision of a European Union. It is no coincidence that the bloc placed part of its institutional headquarters in Alsace’s capital, Strasbourg.

"But today, its younger generations have no memory of industrialized slaughter. Instead, their consciousness has been shaped by a decade-long financial crisis, an influx of migrants from Africa and the Middle East, and a sense that the promise of a united Europe is not delivering. To some it feels that Europe’s bloody last century might as well be the Stone Age.

Florida Man Keeps on Counting

This morning’s headline was “Here We Go Again.” I know you all are having a big laugh at the state that can’t finish its elections on time. I resent that. Nothing that happens in Florida wouldn’t happen in other states if you were as evenly divided politically as Florida.

 OK, we have three statewide races – governor, senator and commissioner of agriculture – in recounts, as well as three legislative races, one of them in my county that is formerly famous for hanging chads. More than 8.1 million votes were cast. The percentage difference in the Senate race is 50.08 to 49.92. In the governor’s race it’s 49.59 to 49.18.

 The agriculture commissioner race is a tad wider, but it’s going to recount too since the Democrat has the lead at the moment. Commissioner of agriculture may not sound like much, but the commissioner regularly has to certify every gasoline pump in the state for accuracy.

 Anyhow, as you can see, Florida defines purple.

 Now, what makes it harder to be purple are the things other states have but don’t have to put front and center every time there is an election.

 First thing: Idiots.

Punny headline

Front page headline from today's Chicago Tribune:

I bow to nobody in my appreciation of a good pun; in my view, as a form of humor it is exceeded only by slapstick, preferably of the Three Stooges variety.  That said: isn't there a rule, written or not, that a pun in a headline signals a light-hearted puff piece?  This is an actual news story (VA wants to build a veterans cemetery in a local suburb; locals fear additional traffic and noise from gun salutes).

Flattened

All over America, politicians, pundits and other interested parties are assessing what happened in the midterm elections earlier this week.  On the whole, it's not a clean, simple storyline: the House flipped to the Democrats, but Republicans gained ground in the Senate.  If a midterm election truly is a referendum on the president, the commentariat consensus seems to be that President Trump neither was wholly repudiated nor wholly endorsed.  Nationally, we seem to be in for gridlock on the governing front, and interminable investigations and warfare on the political front, for the next two years.

But here in Illinois, the story is a good deal simpler: the Republicans were routed.  It was a bloodbath.  It was a massacre.  It was Bears vs. Redskins, 1940 NFL title game.   Among the highlights, or lowlights, depending on your point of view:

Only in the U.S. of A.

 When I connected with the outside world this morning, my man Charles P. Pierce had already found, on CBS, a guy at the Thousand Oaks shooting who had also been at the massacre at the country music show in Las Vegas a little more than 13 months ago. "Go ahead," Pierce said. "Tell me this is normal. Tell me that the Constitution was designed so that people can be witness to two mass shootings in 13 months."
 Interesting thought.
 Some of you, like me, probably just listened to the NPR interview with the news editor of the Pepperdine University newspaper.  She had almost been at the bar in Thousand Oaks but stayed home and, instead, stayed up all night reporting the story.  She said covering the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 for her high school paper helped her decide to go into journalism.
 Now she is covering  a massacre while in college.
 Tell me this is normal. Tell me being a journalist means covering one massacre while you are in high school and another in college before they even start paying you for your work.

Let's turn our attention to the past! Update

What a week and it's only Thursday!

So it was with relief and a degree of pleasure that I read a report in the Guardian observing the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport at the Jewish Museum in London. 

In brief (from wiki): "The Kindertransport (German for "children's transport") was an organized rescue effort that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig."

The Guardian today published the account of Ruth Barnett and her brother Martin with both its inspiring and very sad aspects. I have a neighbor born in Austria who has sent to England in the Kindertransport where she acquired and still revels in having a "second family," the Quaker family who took her in. Her parents ultimately reached New York, where she joined them after the war. Now at the age of 90 plus, she is a charming and lively part of my book group.  

10,000 children taken in! What a contrast to the caravan-phobia emanating from the highest office in our land.

Update: Here is the Guardian's second installment on the Kindertransport: "I was bowled over that these non-Jewish people were nice to us!"

Buffalo update - Updated

Update 11/9/2018 5:41 pm CT - as this post dwells for a bit on the ambiguity of a diocese's responsibility for religious-order priests who abuse within the diocese's boundaries, this may be of interest: the western US province of the Society of Jesus has announced that it will release the names of Jesuit priests who have abused since 1950.   More here.  The article states that the other Jesuit provinces in the US will be following suit as they are able to prepare the information for release.  The head of the western province acknowledged that releasing the names may trigger additional lawsuits, but "We just felt like it’s the right thing to do."

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Last month, we looked at the devastating 60 Minutes report on the lack of transparency in the Buffalo diocese.  The diocese publicly had named 42 priests with accusations of sex abuse of minors, but a whistleblower, the bishop's former executive assistant, told 60 Minutes about coming across some files stored in a cleaning closet that listed accusations against over 100 priests.   In addition, a priest of the diocese who advised the bishop on canon law matters told 60 Minutes that there were priests with accusations against them who still were in active ministry.  The bishop, Richard Malone, is under intense scrutiny and pressure from media and local Catholics, and the diocese is being investigated by state and federal officials.

Crux is now reporting that the diocese has released the names of an additional 36 priests with accusations against them, and has received a "tsunami" of additional allegations.

Voting in your locale?

How is voter turnout looking in your town? Any interesting state ballot proposals? Hopes and predictions? Good/bad media coverage?

Discuss here!

Getting out the vote.

At the Washington Post, a very good friend has posted the following:
 

Liberals, get a grip. Democrats who oppose abortion are still Democrats.

".... I urge voters who support the choice for life to ignore the “not welcome” and “keep quiet” signs that liberal Democrats have hung on their party’s door; I tell them we should send Democrats, of whatever stripe, to Congress. Of whatever stripe means supporting — energetically — what will inevitably be largely candidates who support abortion rights. 

 The blue wave I hope for would mean a House, and maybe even Senate, that supports abortions. A troubling prospect, I admit, for someone with my perspective.

"But this isn’t just about the lesser of two evils, although it’s true that only a significant Democratic victory will check the president’s relentless assault on our nation’s political norms, its vulnerable people and its moral and material environment. Those who oppose abortion have their own moral reasons for looking beyond near-term abortion right advocates' victories and throwing themselves into a blue wave.

"Put very simply, Donald Trump is the worst thing that has ever happened to the antiabortion movement...."

Whole argument at the Wash Post.

Bullshit jobs

Commonweal has a review of David Graeber's book, "Bullshit Jobs" that is worth a read (but approach it with caution if, like me, you are dealing with a convergence of early old-age events--the deaths of your parents, the flight of your children, chronic illness, and retirement--and are inclined to pessimistic thoughts about the Meaning of Life).

“[A] bullshit job,” according to Graeber’s working definition, “is a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.” Crucially, this does not cover situations in which the person doing the job believes it serves a purpose, but others do not. 

How Do You Do It?

My 18 year old son recently asked me how I travel. He was recounting a trip he took to Paris (with someone else) about two years ago. His guide had tried to jam in as many important cultural stops into the day as possible, getting up at dawn and grinding him down by foot until late at night. The climax was one night at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where he had rebelled and refused to move another inch. He was scolded and lectured (tearfully at that) that he simply must go to the top of the metal tower or it would be a very bad thing. He stood his ground, but two years later he still felt guilty about it.

I told him that I like to go to places that have some sort of culture to them, but that I travel loosely. I might have two can't miss places on any trip no matter where (Istanbul: The Hagia Sofia and St Savior in Chora; Paris: Two art museums chosen by whatever is fascinating to me at the time; Kyoto: The Mimitzuka (a monument built around the severed ears of 20,000 Korean soldiers, taken as trophies in a war in the late 16th century) and a grubby, but very intimate little restaurant run by a man from an old samurai family who makes metal fittings for temples and who loves to fish (I don't fish, but for some reason I love to talk about fishing in Japanese). It's not that I don't want to see anything else or won't see anything else. But I like to take my time, because invariably the most memorable stuff when traveling takes place outside of the plan.

My son could relate, but he thought I was holding something back. I tried to argue that one's time should be very loose so that one can really see things. But thinking about it I realized that he was right.

Bishop lands on naughty list

The Catholic church's clergy woes opened a new chapter this week when a bishop in downstate Illinois was accused of complicating parents' lives and endangering toy sales by allegedly informing fifth and sixth graders that Santa Claus doesn't exist.

Fall back farther - Update

Update 11/2/2018 4:20 pm CDT: in writing below about the time of day of the fatal accident in Indiana, I had incorrectly assumed that all of the state is on Central Time.  Not true; clusters of counties in the northwest and southwest corners of the state are on Central Time, while the rest of the state, including Fulton County where the accident occurred, is on Eastern Time.  Many thanks to Tom Blackburn for pointing this out.  I've corrected the post below.

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You probably know that early Sunday morning, we in the US (except Arizona and Hawaii) need to set our clocks back by an hour, and thereby revert from daylight saving time to standard time.

I've been an early riser since I left college, so I've generally liked this weekend and loathed its evil twin in the spring.  After a few years, as a young adult, of investing emotionally in the topic and boring my family and friends with my twice-annual alternating hosannas and laments about falling back and springing ahead respectively, I've come to understand that time changes are temporary nuisances that disrupt my body cycle for 2-3 days at the most, after which life marches on.

But.

Come, Come, Ye Saints

This hymn, which seems appropriate for All Saints' Day, is one I remember from mixed chorus in high school.  You won't find it in the missalette; it is a Mormon hymn. Maybe the Mormon signature hymn. (More about signature hymns later).  Anyway, the reason I chose it instead of the more standard hymns to do with saints, is the somber and sad things which have happened lately.  This is a hymn about persevering in the face of adversity and struggle, about saints in progress rather than saints triumphant.  It seemed appropriate for the times when we aren't quite ready for the Glorious Mysteries.  It's also a nod to my pioneer ancestors and the struggles they faced.

Knocking down the guardrails

Election season has reached fever pitch, so it is not surprising to hear opponents of Donald Trump attempting to make instant connections between the president and the twin acts of domestic terrorism from the last couple of weeks: the (thankfully) inept mail bombs from Cesar Sayoc to prominent liberals; and the monumental tragedy of the synagogue assassinations in Pittsburgh by Robert Bowers. 

Frankly, I'd thought a lot of the connection-making rhetoric was altogether too facile.  I'm not aware that Trump had said or done anything particularly anti-Semitic during his presidency, nor to encourage attacks against prominent Democratic leaders.  Furthermore, his reactions to both sets of events have been, more or less, what one would expect of a conventional president.  So I'd been chalking up the connection-making to politics and the continuing efforts by the so-called Resistance to discredit Trump's presidency.

Then I read Bret Stephens' column in the New York Times this morning.

#ShowUpforShabbat

Solidarity Shabbat: We Stand with Pittsburgh

The Jewish community is inviting ALL to #ShowUpForShabbat on Friday evening or Saturday morning. I plan to go attend the Shabbat service at one of our local synagogues tomorrow evening. I first checked their website to be sure that this particular congregation was supporting #ShowUpForShabbat and welcoming non-Jews during their time of mourning.

From the WaPo Acts of Faith email newsletter today (p.s. the editor is Jewish)

  

Dear Acts of Faith readers,

I know all of you are well aware of the tragic religion news this week — the murder of 11 worshipers at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the deadliest attack on American Jews in history.

As we learn more about the victims and the alleged perpetrator and watched how a grieving city handled a tumultuous presidential visit, I have been struck by the support offered to the Jewish community by other people of faith.

Clergy of all faiths helped organize vigils across the nation, and spoke out about the need to respond not only with empathy but with policies to reduce mass shootings and with renewed efforts to root out anti-Semitism in public discourse. Here in Washington, dozens of clergy crowded to the front of Adas Israel synagogue on Monday night, where the city’s mayor and the governors of Virginia and Maryland pledged their determination to eradicate anti-Semitism in our region. Across the country, Muslim Americans contributed more than $150,000 for the shooting victims: “This could have very well been at a mosque or a Hindu temple,” the organizer of the fundraising campaign told The Post’s Allison Klein.

Jewish groups are urging Jews and non-Jews alike to #ShowUpforShabbat by attending Friday or Saturday services this weekend in a show of solidarity, and Muslim, Sikh and Christian congregations are inviting their members to attend services at a synagogue. “After Oak Creek, the Jewish community resoundingly stood by Sikh Americans, and this time we encourage our whole community to stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters,” Sikh activists wrote in an email to Sikhs across the country.