Category Archives: Religion

What Heroism Looks Like

Leave a reply

Weather in the Tries: 
Gonna be cold nights most of the week—23F to 37F. The two nights above freezing will be cloudy and rainy. The days will start at 37F and work up to 47F (can you say rain?) and down to 39F. The first 3 days will be sunny, then the gray, and wet, move back. 

What Heroism Looks Like:
I am not a hero. I did not watch any of the festivities of the swearing-in of FFOTUS (First Felon of the United States). I figured there would be plenty of snippets on YouTube later. And there were and still are. From his oath not taking with his left hand by his side, not on the stack of FFOTUS Bibles to the sermon by Washington Bishop Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde to those of the FF Family (FFF or F3 of Fcubed, which is better?) who attended, as well as the regular attendees. (I’m fairly sure there were enough seats for the regulars as well as the FFF). Watch Hero Budde and the FFF &c conspicuous in the front pews. 

For one Christian to beg another Christian to show love and mercy seems downright weird. I mean, isn’t that what they are supposed to do? Wish they’d spend more time on Matthew 5:3-10 and less on Exodus 20:2-17. I get asked every so often why I am no longer a Christian. I often respond by telling them I couldn’t stand the hate anymore. I don’t miss the guilt, either.

I don’t know which made me the sickest—that the traitorous FFOTUS and his side kick were sworn in, or that the South African Nazi GAVE THE NAZI SALUTE TWICE IN OUR CAPITOL! Did you see his expression—pure venom, hate, anger. It was NOT enthusiasm, at least not joyous enthusiasm. He should be deported before you read this! (I am forever the optimist. He won’t be.)

When I was stationed in Germany in ’67, ’68, my dearly beloved and I would go down to Basel, Switzerland every so often for a week-end away, and stay at a nice hotel. We’d go down to the bar and order our beer. Then we’d be quiet, and listen. When we needed a refill, we’d just raise our hand, or show our empty glass. Pretty soon, the good old boys would forget we were there and start talking about the good old days in Germany (right across the river/border), before the Reich fell, and how they were working to re-establish it. Little did Dearly Beloved and I believe they would succeed and in the USA, to boot! I’m glad he died years ago and didn’t live to see this sad state of affairs materialize. We thought the Eagle would get tired of rattling his sword. We were wrong.

And the oligarchs (I like my spelling better, oligarks, but spell check had a hissy fit. I just added it to my dictionary, so you may see it again/snicker/) staring at Jeff Bezo’s girlfriend’s boobs, especially Zuck. But did you notice where Jeff was staring? Doesn’t it make you proud to be an American with those wonderful, loving, caring, billionaires, I mean people, leading us? and giving us the honor and privilege to happily pay their share of taxes?

No, we should NOT compromise with them. Why not ask a Judge to compromise with a murderer at sentencing? Can’t be done! Or a student to ask the teacher to compromise over studies (not that they have any anymore) and test scores? Or an employee to ask her boss to compromise on pay? We will not give up our rights, birthrights or other rights. 

Another hero, who should have been our president long ago. It’s only a 7 minute video. Check it out. We do have heroes. We just need to find them, and LISTEN to them. Listen up. Pay attention. They’re here.

Do Not Obey in Advance.

Do Not Compromise with them.

Do not let them get away with swearing to defend our Constitution against enemies both foreign and domestic, and then piss on it within minutes. FFOTUS, when your yellow stream hit the sheepskin upon which our Constitution was written, did the ink run? did the skin shrivel and dissolve into dust? did it go out in a blaze of glory?

Photo of the Week:
took this a few days ago, the pond still hasn’t thawed in our inlet. where the sun hits it at the other end, it thaws a bit, then freezes again. on day one, there was one rock. on day two a few. now there are even more. from some of the evidence, I think most are being thrown in by small rock throwers. better they throw at the ice than living beings 😉

from the desk of the mighty dog;
you humans are really weird. why don’t you let the pack decide who is top dog/ then if you don’t like him, run him out. banish him to the forest or the desert or the swamp. if he doesn’t go like he should, well, the pack has other ways to defend itself.

Earworm of the Week: 
Official music video for ‘Wolf Totem’ by the HU. Read the words of the translation, that’s why I put in this link. A good protest song!

Quotes of the Week:

“Remember: The Lord works in mysterious ways—
but karma works in hilarious ways.”
~ God @godpod.bsky.social

Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ “We are all related” ~ Lakota Saying


“Re-examine all you have been told.
Dismiss what insults your soul.”
~Walt Whitman

Addendum:
I started writing this post on Tuesday of this week, and I am old and lazy and don’t want to rewrite the beginning, but today, Thursday, there is an update on the Good Bishop Budde. FFOTUS demanded an apology (poor, whiny FFOTUS got his widdle feelers hurt). In an interview with Time this week, she made it crystal clear she isn’t backing down. “My faith compels me to stand up for truth, justice, and love—even when it means defying powerful figures who seek to distort it,” she declared. “I am not going to apologize.” [emphasis mine] copied from Letters from God.

The Great, The Marvelous, the Most Fantastic…

Leave a reply

As of 26 Sep 20, 204,499 Americans have died from Covid19. At 5 seconds to intone each name, and maybe ring a bell, it would take 11 days, 20 hours, 1 minute, 35 seconds to read and tally our loss. At least half would still be alive if people cared about their neighbors and wore masks and the CDC had not been politicized.

…Ruth Bader Ginsburg (aka the Notorious RBG) has died. Age, 87. You all know that. I was too upset to write anything last week, so I’ll write it now, a week after her death. She was, truly, all those things, and she will be sorely missed. Her death may, at this time, bring about the beginning of the end of our country as we know it.

This is an opinion piece. But, what the heck, it’s my blog, so I can write my opinion. (You may counter in the comment section.)

It didn’t take long for the Unholy Swamp Triune to come out and say that they don’t give a rat’s hind end what the American people want, they’re hell-bent-for-leather to name and confirm, a new Supreme before the election. And she’s going to be a “Right to Lifer.” Rules and precedent be damned! Almost three out of four Americans support a woman’s right to control her body. They Unholy Ones don’t. They want to go back in time to the wonderful fiction of Father Knows Best that only existed on television, not in actuality.

And therein lies my angst. Oh, not that they will cheat, that’s a given, but how they have perverted the term “Pro Life/Right to Life.” For the sake of this discussion, I am going to make Right to Life and Pro-Life mean the same thing. These people, all good members of their faith, are NOT Pro Life. They are Pro Birth and Anti-Woman. They want to take all rights away from women, especially where her reproductive life is concerned, because they don’t think women are intelligent enough to think things through. You know, hormones rage and emotions swing, and they have power given by their patriarchal god to rule women and by their god, they’re gonna! After all, if they can keep women pregnant and at home, they won’t take a job from another testosterone poisoned male. And it’s easier to blame a woman than keep their trousers zipped.

I won’t go so far as to say NONE of these Right to Lifers are, but I’ve only met one, and that was years ago, and she put her money where her mouth was! She went to her lawyer, paid to have the papers drawn up, then went to the abortion clinic, talked to the manager in charge, explained what she wanted, and received permission to wait inside and talk to the women seeking treatment. She explained who she was and said if they would carry the baby to term, she would pay all pre-natal costs, delivery costs, etc., and adopt the baby. She showed them the papers, and letters of recommendation that she would make a good mother. She didn’t have any takers, but no one complained to management about her being there. She never adopted (she was single and at that time single women adopting was frowned upon, after all, a baby needs a daddy) but she did take in teens as a foster mother.

Now, I’m Pro Choice or, if you prefer, Pro Life. To me, they are the same thing. Yes, really. The same. I know women who have had abortions, and none chose that option lightly. There were medical reasons, financial reasons, real and solid reasons. Because they had a medical procedure in a safe and sterile environment, many went on to later raise, love, and care for healthy families.

They took care of themselves. They were Pro Life. They made a difficult decision and have lived with it. But they still live. I don’t know any who had an abortion because they got ‘knocked up’ at an inconvenient time.

My mini quilt, Walking the Red Road. (It really is square, the caera wonked it.)

Ladies and Gentlemen, if you don’t want an abortion, then by all means, don’t have one! If your god says it’s wrong to have an abortion, then don’t have one. But the face of your god is not the face of every other woman’s god. And this is NOT a religious country, it is a secular country founded to remain secular with a separation between Church and State. Remember, the world cannot support our current population, and add into that Climate Change, rising seas, and wildfires….

If you are going to vote as a Right to Lifer, then, please, vote for all that entails—good pre- and post-natal care for the mother, good medical and dental coverage for the child until an adult, enough money to have the necessities of life—shelter, food, clothing, education, etc, for that child until s/he is an adult. Don’t say you’re Pro Life when you really only want the woman to have the baby and you don’t care to help out after. That’s not Pro Life. That’s Pro Birth.

Again, I say, if you don’t want an abortion, please, I beg you, don’t have one! But don’t try to force your morality on others, for one day you may be judged by your morality as lived and thought and held in your heart, and you may not like it. One day, these words may appear on your wall, Mene, mene tekel upharsin.

Entertainment:

TCM: I have long said I’d go with any cable company that would let me choose 10 channels and charge me appropriately — Spectrum did. I now have, among other channels, Turner Classic Movies, and on Saturday night I turned it on just as the credits finished for The Red Shoes. The movie came out in 1948, I probably saw it sometime between 1950-1955. It ranked right up there with An Affair to Remember and The Quiet Man in my all-time most loved movies. I’ve seen the latter two several times, sometimes whole movies, usually bits, parts, and pieces. Saturday is the first time I remember seeing The Red Shoes in a reaaaalllllly long time—like since the first time I saw it. Yes, it’s a romantic drama, and I loved it even more now, as an adult, than I did as a kid of 10 or so. I remembered my favorite part, if not exactly the words, the intent. He: Why do you dance? She: Why do you live? I also remember sitting in the theater when it ended thinking that I was a big girl and big girls don’t cry. Well, I didn’t sob out loud. Do I get points for that? Saturday, I sat on my couch and decided it’s perfectly fine for an old Auntie to cry/sniff/sob/tear. I did laugh at the two white males discussing the ending after the end. It’s probably a good thing I wasn’t in the studio, or one might be walking funny now. He thought she was somehow weak. Both of them missed what, to me, was so blatantly obvious—she felt pressured to choose between the love of her life, her husband and the love of her living, dancing. It was obvious to the men, of course, that she should choose between marriage and family or singledom and career. How dare she want both? Why, that was/is a privilege reserved for men. /meow/ Not a HEA movie, but, if you get the chance to see it, well worth the 2 hours 13 minutes of your time to watch it. Some absolutely gorgeous ballet! It’s available to rent on Amazon Prime.

Amazon Prime:  

IMDB has free (with commercials) tv series. I started watching the old Banacek series, again. Loved that show. We’ll see if it holds up.

Books: 

For any books I may have finished and reviewed and mayhaps a bit of snark, see Rainy Day Reads Who? Me? Snark? Bwahahahaha! 

CORRECTION: Last week I said I had Wyrds by Weld Champneys on my bed to read, I hang my head in unabashed shame, the title is Wirds, and it has now moved to my bedside table to be read randomly just before I turn out the light. A delightful book of poetic humor, review is on my site above. 

Wearing a mask is a proven method to help slow down the spread of Covid19. Please, wear your mask. And wear it properly—keep it over your nose! Your Auntie and your Granny appreciate your thoughtfulness. However, when you come next week for a fresh cuppa and homemade biscotti, we’ll be properly socially distanced so you may remove your mask at that time. Honest. Trust me.

Notorious RBG, We Miss You!

Auntie Lenora

The “Red Road” is a metaphor for living a spiritual way of life. Oglala Sioux medicine man and holy man, Black Elk, spoke of the all the people on the red road as being one interconnected circle of people that made a sacred hoop. Only you can walk your journey, but many are on the road. https://www.spirithorsenation.org/the-red-road

If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing with others.

Thank you. Auntie Lenora

You Would Think…

2 Replies

… since I spend so much time with words—reading them, writing them, listening to them, speaking them (when I have a voice with which to speak)—I’d be fairly conversant in the meanings of them. Well, I am with most of them, but every so often I get to wondering what a particular word means. One I’ve used ever since I learned to speak in moderately coherent sentences, but never really thought of. 

Two words and their usage regarding grave sites or other plots of ground, have puzzled me for some time are ‘holy’ or ‘sacred.’ Why have areas of bones and ash been so designated? Who determines if this plot of land is or isn’t holy? The term, ‘Holy Land’ means something very different to me than it possibly means to you. If you follow one of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim faiths (faiths of The Book), it means the middle east—today’s Israel and Palestine.  If you follow other faiths, that term probably means other countries, other areas, depending on where your god was born, raised, died, and resurrected. To me, it is any piece of land on which I stand and hear the world go hush, hear the holy song, think the holy thoughts, and know the love of all my relations.* Whether that is desert of New Mexico, the coast of Oregon, the Black Hills of the Dakotas, or the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic. It’s me that makes it a holy land for me, wherever I am when the song, the hush, the thoughts come.

So, back to my question, why are grave sites considered holy, or sacred? Who gives them that designation? Well, thanks to Google, I have an answer. Those words are designations that humans give (not gods) to areas to set them apart, to keep them separate, to honor the dead buried in them. They are set apart in that manner to make it clear that mankind designated them holy, not religion.

I wrote a poem a while back, called Holy Lands (not yet published, but making the rounds), and a couple of people in my poetry group had a hard time accepting that term. To them, the holy lands were where their god was born, lived, died, and resurrected. They could accept the term sacred, and we had a pretty good discussion about it. And yes, it was a good discussion, no raised voices, etc. The poem is still called Holy Lands. I’m in a good group, and their input is valued, and I often make their suggested changes to my work. In this case I believe I used all of their suggestions but that one. 

Of course, I now come up with more questions. Below is a photo I took last winter at dawn. I took it from my patio, I heard the song, heard the hush, thought the thoughts, and for a time, I stood in a holy place looking at this holy view. Is my patio holy now? No. But for a moment in time it was. As the Buddhists might say, I was awakened or enlightened at that moment, gazing at the sunrise, the trees, the river. The photo reminds me it happened and can happen again. Awakening or enlightenment is not a once and you’re done happening. It happens and happens again. As the Buddhists also say, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” In other words, life goes on, only awakened you are more in tune with it, the harmony of living on our planet is greater. At least for a while. Because you don’t awake from sleep only once, but every morning, so does enlightenment happen more than once.

*All my relations: Lakota, Mitakuye Oyasin, means All Are Related or All My Relations.

Also, in keeping with today’s subject, I offer another phrase. “Bright eyed and bushy tailed.” Now, where did that one come from? What does it mean? That’s another one I’ve heard, and used, since, well, I could speak. It’s straight out of the fox hunts. A fox whose eyes are dull, whose tail is not groomed and bushy, is not a healthy fox. So, when someone wishes you a good night’s sleep, and that you wake bright eyed and bushy tailed, they are saying they hope you wake well rested and healthy. Who knew?

My Week’s Entertainment:

TV:

Amazon Prime: One of my all-time most favoritest TV shows is Morse. I think I’ve seen them all, some more than once. The other day I realized Amazon Prime has the first six seasons (alas, short seasons of 4 episodes each) of Endeavour. Morse, who never ever used his first name, had one, of course. It was Endeavour. And this series is the prequel to Morse. Endeavour as a young man, just starting out. The cast, the props, etc., are all top drawer. If you haven’t seen it, I heartily recommend it. (I wonder where they found so many actors who still smoke tobacco? Or if those were all fake and CGI? Just watching those smoke-filled rooms, etc., set off my allergies! The wildfires outside didn’t help, either.)

Netflix: 16 episode Korean, good subtitles, It’s Okay Not to be Okay. This was a fun ‘dramedy’ — listed as a Romantic Drama, I found far more laughs in it than drama; however, the drama was intense enough to pull it out of the comedy category. The central protagonists are two brothers, the younger taking care of the older who is on the autism spectrum, and a writer of children’s fairy tales who is, well, hard to like at first, but for good reason. Her mother was a monster, and disappeared when the girl was quite young. The girl wasn’t sure if she was dead or alive. Her mother drove away the one friend the girl had before leaving. The mother of the two boys was killed shortly before the mother left (died?) and the boys took off on their own before the police could separate them and institutionalize the older brother. Sounds pretty grim, doesn’t it? That’s why it’s not a comedy. But it’s full of humor and laughs-out-loud. The older brother is a delight. His world is black or white, and he is honest to a fault—and many laughs. Highly recommended.

Books:

I’m a pretty eclectic reader. I tend to go in streaks and read fiction (prefer happy endings to my escapes) and poetry as my primary choices, but that leaves it wide open. I also read nonfiction, especially essays or biographies. Rather than give you a list of what I’ve read and recommend in the past week, I’ll give you a link to my book blog, Rainy Day Reads. You probably won’t care about all the books, but the list goes back a few years. Prowl around, and if you like some, hit the Follow button and each time I post a new book, you’ll be notified. Or you should be.

Show your love; wear your mask. Show you care for your family, your friends, and your community. Show those nasty old flowers you don’t care for their pollen. And y’all come back next week, same masked time, same masked place. The coffee is always on, the biscotti are home made, and we’ve always got time for a coffee break and a visit. (And, we’ll be socially distanced, so you can remove your mask. 😉

Auntie Lenora