And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
-1 John 4:16
I have had some kind of stomach bug all weekend, so I am not feeling well enough to write a Sunday post. However, I thought I’d post one of my favorite Bible verses. I think in this one verse, John summed up the core belief of Christianity.
“First of all, it’s important to remind the former president: You’re not running against Joe Biden. You’re running against me.”
Vice President Kamala Harris went into the debate with a clear plan: let Donald Trump defeat himself. Harris baited Donald Trump for nearly all of the 1 hour and 45 minutes of their first and potentially only debate on Tuesday night – and Trump took every bit of it. While Trump spouted lies, used his usual juvenile name-calling, and and had temper tantrums worthy of a two-year old, Harris sat back and laughed, quite literally at times. She used every trick to bait him into getting defensive, cause him to lose his temper, and calling Trump out on his lies.
Harris was occasionally mocking, but she didn’t resort to the name-calling and stuck to the truth. I thought her nerves got the better of her in the beginning. I could hear the nervousness in her voice. She needed to take a deep breath and not try to get her whole answer out in one breath. It didn’t take her long to do so, and she stayed calm but authoritative. She looked like a leader. She looked healthy, young, and sane. As much as I like Joe Biden, he looked sickly in the last debate, for good reason because he was sick. Trump looked like an old raving lunatic. If you’ve ever encountered one of those street preachers who rant about “the end is near,” then you’ve seen how Trump performed, but with much more juvenile behavior.
Harris got under former Trump’s skin with a mocking comment about the attendance at his campaign rallies during Tuesday night’s ABC News presidential debate in Philadelphia. “I’m going to invite you to attend one of Trump’s rallies because it’s a really interesting thing to watch,” Harris said, looking straight into the camera. “You’ll hear about Hannibal Lecter, how windmills cause cancer, and what you’ll also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. The only thing you won’t hear him talk about is your needs, your dreams and your desires.”
The vice president had prepared extensively for their debate and peppered nearly every answer with a comment designed to enrage the former president. She told Trump that world leaders were laughing at him, and military leaders called him a “disgrace.” She called Trump “weak” and “wrong.” She said Trump was fired by 81 million voters – the number that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020. Trump was often out of control. He loudly and repeatedly insisted that a whole host of falsehoods were true. The former president repeated lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election. He parroted a conspiracy theory about immigrants eating pets, and lied about Democrats supporting abortions after babies are born – which is murder, and illegal everywhere.
Incurable
By Dorothy Parker
And if my heart be scarred and burned,
The safer, I, for all I learned;
The calmer, I, to see it true
That ways of love are never new—
The love that sets you daft and dazed
Is every love that ever blazed;
The happier, I, to fathom this:
A kiss is every other kiss.
The reckless vow, the lovely name,
When Helen walked, were spoke the same;
The weighted breast, the grinding woe,
When Phaon fled, were ever so.
Oh, it is sure as it is sad
That any lad is every lad,
And what’s a girl, to dare implore
Her dear be hers forevermore?
Though he be tried and he be bold,
And swearing death should he be cold,
He’ll run the path the others went.…
But you, my sweet, are different.
About the Poem
“Incurable” is part of Dorothy Parker’s poetry collection Sunset Gun (Boni & Liveright, 1928). In 1934, The English Journal published Mark Van Doren’s essay “Dorothy Parker.” Van Doren criticized Parker’s poetics, stating, “[Her] poetry is of a consistent and unvarying sort, differing little from volume to volume. Enough Rope (1926) contains eerie measure and every theme employed either in Sunset Gun (1928) or in Death and Taxes (1931), the only novelty being that each volume has been shorter than its predecessor, and, perhaps, in view of its refusal to cut any new paths, less interesting. Mrs. Parker’s poetry, then, may be seen at once to have its unity and its wholeness. What should be said of it? It is neat and clear, and it is mordant; it is also—and this may be the reason for its popularity—sentimental.” Unable to gauge Parker’s contribution to American poetry and her longstanding impact on literature, Van Doren went on to say, “She may please many people at the moment, but considering what English poetry can be and has been there is not the slightest chance, unless she sets out deliberately to improve her product, that she will be numbered among the good.”
About the Poet
Dorothy Parker, born on August 22, 1893, in West End, New Jersey, was an editor, writer, and early Modernist poet. She authored several literary works, including the poetry collection, Enough Rope (Boni & Liveright, 1926). Parker, best known as a key member of the famed Algonquin Round Table, was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1959. She died on June 6, 1967.
Teach me to do Your will,
For You are my God;
Your Spirit is good.
Lead me in the land of uprightness.- Psalm 143:10
The 143rd Psalm is a psalm identified as being written by King David. The New King James Version gives this psalm the title, “An Earnest Appeal for Guidance and Deliverance.” In verses 3 and 4, David writes:
For the enemy has persecuted my soul;
He has crushed my life to the ground;
He has made me dwell in darkness,
Like those who have long been dead.
Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me;
My heart within me is distressed.
According to Augustine of Hippo this psalm was likely written during the period of the rebellion of David's son Absalom. No one really knows when this psalm was written and what was going on in David’s life, but I think we can look at this psalm and know that David is in great distress. Whatever was happening in David’s life, it is a time of great stress, anxiety, and depression.
I think there are two ways we can look at the 143rd Psalm and see it in our own lives. We are probably all familiar with the expression about missing the forest for the trees, and its wisdom about not being distracted by smaller details that undermine our appreciation of the “big picture.” In this case, I think we can look at this in a way to not only see the trees and the forest but also the small groves that appear here and there. The trees are our own lives, while the grove is our friends and family around us, and the forest being the wider world.
Let’s look at our tree first. If you have not experienced a period of depression and anxiety in your life, then you are very fortunate. Both conditions can be crippling in our lives. To me, I can see Psalm 143:3-4 is describing a period of stress, anxiety, and depression. We may feel persecuted, crushed to the ground, beaten down and our spirit broken. It is in these times that we “dwell in darkness.” I remember back in high school in a time that I look back at now and realize I was coming to terms with my sexuality and was going to a bout of depression. My spirit was “overwhelmed within me.”
I was in a bookstore one evening when I came across the book Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron. The book describes Styron’s descent into depression and his triumph of recovery from that depression. I probably did not realize that what I was feeling was depression until I read this book. No one had ever talked to me about mental illness, nor did anyone tell me that what I was feeling about my sexuality was normal. I know that I am prone to depression. I have had bouts of it throughout my life. Medicine helps, and I take comfort in my friends around me and God’s love for me.
I pray that God will “lead me in the land of uprightness.” The first definition of uprightness in the dictionary describes it as, “the state of being in a vertical position.” The second definition defines it as, “the condition or quality of being honorable or honest.” In the instance of coming to terms with my sexuality, God helped me to accept who I am, to stand, and to lift up my spirit. By doing so, the helped me to be more honest with myself.
The second way we can look at Psalms 143 is that of our immediate surroundings. When we see friends and family in distress, we are there with the Lord to help lift them up to improve their situation. We may not be able to do more than be there for them, but that can go a long way when someone is troubled. There may be other ways we can help that are more physical that lead to a solution to the problem. If their trouble is financial, then maybe we can help. If they are sick, we can do what we can to make them feel better or simply by taking them to the doctor. I am far away from my family. This can be both a good and a bad thing, but I know I have friends up here who can help if I let them. I have had to go to the emergency room twice, and I knew I could count on a good friend of mine to take me. There are many things we can do to help those around us. We just have to try to be of help when we can.
Lastly, we can look at Psalm 143 in the context of the wider world. We live in a time of great strife. The wars in Israel and Ukraine are heartbreaking to see. This last week, there was another mass shooting at a school. Gun violence surrounds us in the United States, and I fear every day for the lives of my friends who are teachers, because you have to wonder: is this going to happen at their school? I had the fear of it happening when I was teaching, and even at my university, we have active shooter drills. Luckily, the museum has a basement that has several doors that can be locked and provide safety, but not everyone has that option. We live in a time when we are literally in a battle between good and evil. In elections around the world, we have seen good versus evil on the ballot. We come to the choice of whether or not we want to live in a society that votes for a group defined by their hate or a group that is defined by loving kindness.
We have the choice: do we want to help people or persecute people? When we go to the ballot box this November, we need to think about what kind of country we want to live in. Do we want a quasi-fascist (or just plain fascist) government who governs based on their hatred and seeks retribution against those who they believe harmed them? Or do we want a government that will help individuals and the country to heal? We are still feeling the effects of the pandemic. Prices are increasing as corporations see this as an opportunity for profit. By harming the economy and putting stress on the consumer, they are creating resentment for the government currently in power. They do this because they know that the party wanting to be in power will do more to help them financially than the average citizen.
In the parable of the sower (Mark 4:3-20), Jesus warned that two out of the four types of soils would fall away because of trials. The seed sown on the rocky soil at first received the word with joy, but when affliction or persecution arose because of the word, they fell away. The seed sown among the thorns took longer to fail. But eventually the thorns, which represent “the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.” (4:19). The only type of soil representing true believers is that which endures and brings forth fruit. False believers reveal their true colors by falling away or returning to the world under trials. So we need to know how to take our trials to the Lord in prayer so that we endure and grow, rather than fall away. That’s what Psalm 143 tells us how to face trials of the world.
If we follow God’s teachings, He will help us, put an end to our enemies’ quest for dominance and destroy the hate that they spread. Psalm 143 ends with the plea, “Revive me, O Lord, for Your name’s sake! For Your righteousness’ sake bring my soul out of trouble. In Your mercy cut off my enemies and destroy all those who afflict my soul; for I am Your servant.” (Psalm 143:11-12) While David may have literally been praying that God would destroy his enemies, we can pray that God will defeat those who are motivated by hate. God will lift our spirits in times of distress and cut off the cause of our depression and anxiety. Moreover, God can work through us to help those around us in their times of need. There is one thing that God can always give us: Hope.
I don’t think she approved of the ingredient I just added.
Now, she seems just surprised and maybe skeptical of whatever ingredient I’d just added.
