When Wilderness Calls

Posted: February 15, 2026 in Uncategorized
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The following message was presented to the Rocheport Christian Church (Missouri) on February 15, 2026.

Every so often we are cast into the wilderness, a wild time on the other side of some threshold. Sometimes we choose to jump into the void and sometimes we are pushed from behind and tumble there. But regardless, we find ourselves in some strange landscape we’ve never seen before, a state of being that is perplexing, uncanny, unfamiliar, and uncertain. All the landmarks seem absent. The path we came in on has washed away and the new one has not yet arrived. Individuals sojourn there for sure. But so do groups of people, large and small. We get lost out there in the wilderness.

When we find ourselves in that wilderness one of our frequent reactions is flight, attempting an escape. This is such a natural human response. Indeed, there are times when flight is important and necessary, part of survival. But in most cases when wilderness comes our way, voluntarily or involuntarily, it is important to stand in the trial, to make something of it or be made by it. It is the kind of task that can create a larger, more resilient life.

The thing about wilderness is that it strips us down, like a snake shedding its skin. The wilderness frees us from distraction and provides enough stillness and solitude to visit the inner spaces, so that a better version of us can emerge. It peels off all the old layers of paint, all the masks, all the props, every defense mechanism we’ve employed to create some kind of order. It strips us down to the basics. It deconstructs the little worlds we’ve created and shows us the source of all our self-inflicted wounds. A kind of dying and rising takes place. There are no shortcuts around wilderness, only a pathway through it, and every spiritual journey follows this similar pattern through the refiner’s fire.

Something else that the wilderness reveals is the wild and untamable God that is not under our control. In our world people are inclined to create controllable gods, tribal gods, domesticated gods, gods kept in the back pocket, gods we summon to do our dirty work, gods created in the image of ourselves that have our same values and priorities. In the wilderness all those false gods collapse, and we meet the holy on its own wild terms.

As our spiritual ancestor Jacob discovered, we never win a wrestling match with an angel. We might limp away with a blessing, but its not because we prevailed.

This past summer, I took a pilgrimage to a wilderness of my own. Following Kathy’s death I headed to Costa Rica for ten days of solitude and discovery. I was accompanied by all that was lost and searched for all that could be found. I traveled solo, made my own arrangements, walked the cities and towns, drove to beautiful places, and bathed in beauty and solitude. Days went by with barely conversing with anyone, except in a perfunctory way. It’s exactly what I needed.

On Sunday I decided to drive to the old Spanish capital of Costa Rica, Cartago, to attend the cathedral. I made it and parked my car. The cathedral was built in the old Spanish style with exposed wooden beams, colorfully painted. I arrived after the service had begun and I could hear the singing from outside. I slipped in a side door, and the place was packed with locals, individuals and families. I tried to be inconspicuous and slide into a pew, but … being 6’3” and the only gringo in the place made that difficult. I threw my backpack under a pew and settled in. The music included a solo cantor accompanied by a Spanish style acoustic guitar.

When it came time for communion we went through the liturgy and prayers and finally the moment came when the priest elevated the host and the chancel bells jingled – the highest, holiest moment of the mass.

He held the bread aloft for the longest time, waiting on the Spirit. And then I heard it – a voice. I kid you not. It was an audible voice like my voice now, a human sounding voice. And it said, “Approaching Railroad Crossing.”

I had forgotten to turn off the Mapquest on my phone. I quickly fished into my pocket to turn it off, hoping no one around me knew English. But, too late, busted.

After mass I walked across the plaza in front of the cathedral and settled in for lunch in a little café. And I thought about that serendipity of the voice in my pocket: Approaching Railroad Crossing. At the holiest possible moment in the service the Mapquest voice spoke about crossings, and crossings are most surely where some of the holiest moments in our lives materialize – there at the crossroads between here and there. The wilderness between where we were and are yet to be.

To say that Jesus was at a crossroads is an understatement. After Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River he was led by the Spirit to the wilderness where he fasted for forty days. There he was tested to the core of his being.

His temptations were three and they are universal for all of us:

The first temptation was this:

“If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

This is the temptation to false security, to choose the safe way rather than the hard one placed before us. What do we depend on? Today we might use the language of attachment. When we attach to things that inevitably pass away, we always experience the collapse of false security.

Jesus recognized that we need our daily bread, in fact, it was included in the Lord’s Prayer: Give us this day our daily bread. We are creatures who need to survive. Just try living food insecure, or unable to pay your rent, or unable to get health care for your baby, or having to choose between buying food or buying the medicine you need. No, we need our daily bread.

But this temptation is about the other side of the coin, when we attach to material possessions like a life preserver, like a child’s pacifier. That kind of security is very precarious, which is why Jesus knows he shouldn’t turn the scarcity of the stone into the satiation of bread. We can’t depend on it that way.

Of course, it’s a relevant word for us in our society. So much of the messaging we receive from every quarter is oriented to buying, selling, consuming, possessing, marketing, owning and protecting.

The subliminal and overt messaging is that all this acquiring and consuming will make us happy and secure. When you are anxious, depressed or empty, go online and order something. I know how that is. Lord Amazon shows up on my porch, too. Attachment to material things can be very seductive.

At its worst this becomes unbridled greed, an insatiable appetite that strives for more and more. There is never enough to satisfy. When you’ve got one yacht, maybe two yachts would be better.

To this, Jesus gives us a cold shower: “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Decide what you are ultimately going to depend on.

The second temptation turns a different direction:

“Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

First, the obvious: The tempter is quoting scripture to him. If there is anything more persuasive to a religiously oriented person, it is the authority of scripture. But just remember who’s doing the quoting. That’s right, scripture can be used by anyone to justify anything.

So what is the temptation? He takes him to the temple in Jerusalem, a place where the worship of God should take place, and says that Jesus could throw himself off the parapet of the temple and angels would swoop in at the last moment to break his fall. Go ahead, the tempter says, don’t you have enough faith? Don’t you believe God can do it?

That’s a tricky one. But there is more at work in this temple jumping that meets the eye. Jesus quotes scripture back and says, “Again it is written, ‘Do not tempt (or test) the Lord your God.’” In other words, don’t you go trying to test God. And how would he test God? By calling for a special miracle. What’s wrong with that? It defines the relationship with the holy incorrectly. It’s upside down. We are not to test God, rather, God is to test us.

This temptation goes to the root of our desire to somehow control God. We carry a notion of some cosmic bubblegum machine; put in the quarter and turn the crank. That, of course, creates a way of things in which God is put at our disposal, like an errand boy, a tribal mascot. We try to domesticate God, housebreak God, keep God tucked away in our god box, stored in our back pocket to pull out when convenient.  

What this encourages is a kind of spiritual narcissism: I am at the center of the universe, and this kept God is at my beck and call. We know how dangerous that can become.

Every totalitarian movement in the history of the world has used God and religion in exactly that way. God exists to prop up my ideology and enable my cause. Whether it is the Church and the crusades, or Hitler’s Germany, or Pinochet’s Chile, or slaveholder religion in the Missouri River Valley, the temptation is to use religion to justify what we want, what we believe, to own and control a god we want to have at our disposal.

Go ahead, says the tempter, quoting scripture, throw yourself from temple and call upon God to complete your magic act. How famous you will be! What a celebrity! With that demonstration of power you’ll no doubt gather a crowd. Just imagine what other rabbits you can pull out of your hat. All for 15 minutes of fame!

If I can control God, that god is too small. That is not the mystery of the Cosmos. That’s some little tribal deity I conjured up for my purposes.

Jesus said, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” Get the relationship right. Discard that narcissistic manipulation of faith. And start asking what it takes for me to be in harmony with God, not what God must do to be aligned with my plans.

The final temptation is a doosey.

“The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, ‘All these are yours!’”

Remember: Jesus is not a part of the religious establishment or of the Roman empire. He stands outside of those. He is a wandering peasant mystic from the sticks of Galilee. Why would such a temptation to power come to him as he’s outside of all those power structures?

The temptation to power is endemic to those who practice religious faith. Why? Because they may feel authorized by some sense of divine decree to control others, to take what they want, all for the sake of the kingdom.

Consider Medieval Europe and the domination system of the Church. The power of the Church was woven into the fabric of empire in such a way that the two were barely indistinguishable. And so the Church could mount inquisitions and crusades, take what they wanted, torture who they wanted, control who they wanted, all under the banner of the cross. Divine decree. Manifest destiny. We always say these kinds of things to justify what we want to do. To even feel authorized to spill blood because of it. Whenever church and state get too intertwined, bad things happen.

We have that going on today. And it’s also directly related to the quest for power and domination.

The most obvious example in our time is the rise of Christian Nationalism, something like a Christian Taliban. Christian Nationalism hates democracy and religious freedom. It wants to tear down a pluralistic society and replace with a theocracy – a church/state hybrid comprised of one variant of Christianity with an autocratic state. Through its campaign of the “Seven Mountains” it is attempting to dominate all aspects of society to make it comply by force and law with its religious values and worldview. The mountains to be dominated include the press, education, the arts, private corporations, every branch of government. All under the umbrella of their religious ideology.

The goal is the establishment of a theocratic state that controls citizens in every way with its domination system. It especially attempts to control women, minorities, and the LGBTQ community by systematically stripping away rights and freedoms. That’s the plan.

But you object: “Nothing they say or do has anything to do with Jesus.” You would be right. It doesn’t have anything to do with Jesus. It is the most conspicuous heresy of our time, and it is directly related to this third temptation of Jesus, the temptation to power.

All these kingdoms can be yours – to control, dominate, possess. How seductive that power can be.

What does Jesus have to do to get all this? Well, the text tells us: “’All these are yours … if you will fall down and worship me.’” Ah, let’s make a deal. The deal is you’ve got to sell your soul.

How does Jesus respond to this temptation? Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

Do you notice what happened at the end of all the temptations? After Jesus resisted them, the tempter went away. Interesting, isn’t it? If you feed the wolf, he keeps coming back for more. If you ignore him, he goes away.

It was only after Jesus refused to turn stone into bread by attaching to false security, refused to put God at his disposal by temple jumping, and refused to pursue his own power rather than the power of God, that consolation came. The text says that angels came and ministered to him.

In the quiet place on the other side of the struggle we often discover a deep-down presence that is waiting for us.

It is the consolation of the Spirit that comes when we let go and trust the untamable God of the wilderness, the wild God, the God utterly beyond our control. Only that God can help. Amen.

Dental Floss, Prayers and Pie

Posted: November 29, 2025 in Uncategorized
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I actually have a favorable view of going to my regular teeth cleaning with the dental hygienist. She does a good job, the procedure is relatively painless, and I know her on a first-name basis. We discuss children and make small talk and even know some of the more important things about our lives. Not too long after my wife Kathy died, she gave me a phone call, her voice cracking on the other end of the line. At such times, those kinds of gestures make a big difference. So do random emails and handwritten cards that show up in the mailbox.

After the final flossing we compared signals on which type of Thanksgiving pie occupies most favored status. We basically divided humanity into two camps: the pumpkin pie people and everyone else. Because we fell into the pecan and mincemeat tribe, that meant that we were rooting for the same team. Out of those declarations of pie loyalty, an inner-office pie poll began as a result, and it short order true colors were revealed, the unvarnished truth of closely held pie secrets. Do you like your pumpkin with whipped cream on top? After Thanksgiving do you eat pie for breakfast? Are you willing to pucker up and eat the Gooseberry pie that Aunty Mae brings every year?

Somewhere in the middle of all this frivolity my dentist came in for the post-cleaning check. Everything seemed in order. A quick look and I was declared ready to go forth into the world until the next cleaning. When he made mention of the holidays and what Kathy and I were planning, I realized he hadn’t heard yet. It happens. News of a death gets out unevenly and some hear it before others. More than once, I have had to share the sad news on the spot. That usually leaves the other person not only sad but in an awkward position. How could I have not known? I am so sorry.

But my dentist is different. He is a man dripping with empathy, the real kind without pretense. He is also a person of faith, the kind that just naturally oozes out of his pores because it is part of him. When he asked, Can I pray with you, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world, and right there reclining in the chair I said yes without a second thought. He pulled down his mask, laid his hand on my shoulder, and with my friend the hygienist bowing her head in the background, a treatment suite suddenly became a chapel.

His prayer was more a blessing than anything else, but prayers and blessings are first cousins. He gave thanks for Kathy. He prayed for my encouragement and how grief might turn into gratitude. He blessed me with thoughts of a love-surrounded Thanksgiving and Christmas that could heal wounded places. At the end of those gracious words, he said Amen. And I said, Thank you, I needed that.

As he left my room and headed down the hallway to the next patient, it might have been to a filling or root canal that he went. But for me, that day, he was more than a professional provider. He was a roving chaplain.

Jovial conversations about pie preferences continued all the way out to the reception desk. But what really hovered around me was the blessing in the chair.

We certainly find the ministrations of the spirit in places and persons designed for such things – churches, temples, shrines, and religious leaders on their rounds. But where we need to keep our eyes peeled is on the unpredictable zones, in the millions of cracks, corners, and crevices of this world where the sacred is hiding and waiting to snag us by surprise. Like in a dentist’s chair.

Kathy Carson 1954 – 2025

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Image  —  Posted: July 4, 2025 in Uncategorized

A Churchill moment in the French Senate

Posted: March 14, 2025 in Uncategorized
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President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, My dear colleagues,

Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.

Washington has become the court of Nero, a fiery emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fueled jester in charge of purging the civil service.

This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media.

This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.

I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor.

Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.

Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign.

Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it.

And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.

The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.

What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.

This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.

Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada, you are Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe, he is Taiwan and the China Sea.

At the parties of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, this is called “diplomatic realism.”

So we are alone. But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated.

Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war.

The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.

Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that it holds, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation.

This will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to circumvent Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself by a coalition of only the willing countries, with of course the United Kingdom.

Second, demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.

Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we must build the neglected European defence, to the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and scuttled since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.

Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is to recognize that France has been right for decades in arguing for strategic autonomy.

It remains to be built. It will be necessary to invest massively, to strengthen the European Defence Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, to harmonize weapons and munitions systems, to accelerate the entry into the Union of Ukraine, which is today the leading European army, to rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, to relaunch the anti-missile shield and satellite programs.

The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And much more will be needed.

Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be implemented. For good.

But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.

We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left.

They argued again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defence.

They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin.

Peace for the collaborators who have refused any aid to the Ukrainians for three years.

Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react.

Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.

The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks.

But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads.

The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.

Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost.

The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.

Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.

–Claude Malhuret speaking to the French Senate Tuesday March 4 2025

Bullies on Display or Not Your Mama’s Whitehouse Pathology

Posted: March 2, 2025 in Uncategorized
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Everybody gets to have their own personal experience of institutional evil at least once. I’ve had mine. That helps me spot it when it raises its ugly head, like in the White House last week.

In my own case, years ago, I was on the receiving end of power-hungry bullies. In retrospect I realized they were acting out an abuse pattern. They set me up for attack and projected onto me for the very same behavior they engaged in. They expected me to crawl to them for their approval. When I wouldn’t become their subordinate, it enraged them because they wanted to thrill themselves with their own sense of dominance. I never gave them what they wanted. I’m glad I didn’t. I learned a powerful lesson about this kind of behavior and today I can spot it from a mile off.

I saw the pattern playing out in the Whitehouse last week when President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance met with Ukrainian President Zalenskyy. It was supposed to be one of those ritual photo ops held by heads of state in the oval office after they hashed out the real issues behind the scenes. But the Trump administration had something else in mind. They ambushed their guest.

It was the most disgraceful behavior of a US President since the last time Donald Trump did something disgraceful. It shocked allies around the world. Americans were stunned. Only Trump lapdogs tried to spin the display as something beneficial. The truth is something else: After siding with Russia in a recent resolution on the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the United Nations, the Whitehouse debacle sealed the abandonment of Ukraine in favor of Russia. We are now alone. Except for the company of dictators and bad actors. Our former allies will stand behind Ukraine without us, perhaps against us. Instead, our imperial leaders will talk about annexing Canada, Greenland and Panama.

Identifying abuser behavior in this scenario is not difficult. The abuser blames the victim for their plight. The victim is cajoled into extending endless gratitude. When the victim asserts their independence, they are accused of being ungrateful. Cooperation is equated with capitulation to the abuser. The abuser reminds the victim that they are powerless without the abuser because only the help of the abuser can make them powerful. Interrupting and cutting off the victim in mid-sentence communicates how unimportant their words and ideas actually are. The abuser gaslights the victim by presenting a fabricated reality based on falsehoods. The victim is expected to accept. The victim is accused of being the real problem when they aren’t. They are expected to submit and take responsibility for that which they did not do. The abuser communicates that the victim owes them something, continuing to take from them and coercing them to participate in things that will actually hurt them. The real accomplishments of the victim are dismissed, while the abuser takes credit for the good.

All of this took place in clear sight in the Whitehouse. The Abuser-in-Chief played his role perfectly. But as in so many cases like this, unintended consequences soon rose to the surface. It doesn’t take long for bullies and their behavior to be identified. Collusion with Russia became doubly clear. And the one who was set upon, President Zelenskyy, became the recipient of renewed admiration and support.

Now people of good will around the world are bringing an equal and opposite reaction, gathering around Ukraine in spite of the abandonment by the former leader of the free world. In the meantime, we are cleaning up the blood-splattered flag from our self-inflicted wounds, the source of which sits behind the resolute desk in the oval office.

A dark shadow falls upon the land

Posted: February 18, 2025 in Uncategorized
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Today I had two separate conversations with people directly affected by the current administration’s sacking of the federal government. The first was a man who worked for the Consumer Protection Agency, up until a week ago that is. He was summarily dismissed along with dozens of his fellow staff members. Their job? To protect citizens from the kind of untoward practices that led to the economic meltdown of 2008. But it doesn’t matter if they protect citizens. Something else is at work.

The second was a retired federal law enforcement employee who provided the blow by blow of the Doge invasion of personal records, the kind of privacy and security invasion that would have justified an investigation just a few years ago.

It is clear that we have entered new territory. By now we are becoming aware of the many agencies affected, including USAID, NIH, FFA, IRS, Social Security, and more. Here is the thing: Elon Musk and his storm troopers operate under the mask of efficiency, rooting out waste, and eliminating fraud. But it’s a smoke screen to cover what they are really up to. I want to talk about that.

It has been the plan to gut the federal government as a part of a second Trump term. It was outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 – its roadmap. People like billionaire Peter Thiel who bought J.D. Vance’s Senate seat and placed him in the Vice Presidency, and Oligarch Elon Musk, the South African who bought Donald Trump’s Presidency in return for favors, join with other authoritarian-leaning oligarchs in an ambitious attempt to undo democracy and replace it with a single party, autocratic, theocratic fascist state. To get there you have to destroy things. You have to savage the separation of powers, sack the judiciary, gag the press, and pillage every institution of government, removing expertise and smarts. They want to privatize health care and the support of veterans and make millions off them. They want to gut anything that benefits all the people and make those who are already economically fat even more obese. They want to eliminate those who can investigate them and fire career law enforcement people. They want to politicize the military and transform them into the President’s new storm troopers. Replace competent people with compliant unqualified people. Silence and disappear the scientists and experts. Soil international relationships. And while they are at it, dismiss the board of the Kennedy Center and move in Trump as the chair.

Why all this? To consolidate absolute power. To move beyond governing a state and instead forming an international cabal of strongmen and oligarchs to determine everyone’s future and profit off it. They will decide what happens to Ukraine. They will decide what happens to Gaza. Trump wants this. So do his wealthy enablers. And his populist working class minions don’t even know that they are being played with a sheaf of culture war issues du jour.

That is exactly why a bunch of inexperienced tech kids under the supervision of the rogue shadow President, Elon Musk, are tearing through government with a digital chain saw. It is not their mission to reform; they want to destroy. And unless someone stops them, they will do just that.

This is also why American politicians like Vance and Hegseth show up at a security conference in Munich with supposed allies and trashes them. And spouts Russian talking points instead. Putin was surely tossing back a double vodka on that one. What useful idiots I have in America, he must think. Yes, the enemies of America are within. And they are mine.

One response is for Americans to throw up our hands and say, “Oh, well, there’s nothing to do.” Another is denial, “It’s not that bad, things swing back and forth.” Another is to be petrified and stuck in place with feet in concrete. None of these are adequate for these times.

As opposed to the fake Christian Nationalists who use religion to accomplish their ideological ends, I want to suggest another way forward. I think that the menace that stalks at noonday is already in the land. The whore of Babylon is here. I think that only spiritual power and moral resolve can stand against this tyranny. This requires resistance to injustice, domination, and destruction. This requires denouncing the ways the worst among us are thrilled at marginalizing anyone who doesn’t look like them and worship their small little tribal god.

For everything there is a season. It’s time to be prophets, not consolers. Not time to comfort, but rather to confront.

We do not choose the times given, only how we will respond. Generations from now they will look back at us and ask, “Did they stand against the plague?”

Well, did we?

The Resistance Begins Now

Posted: February 17, 2025 in Uncategorized
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This week I sent out a video through TikTok in which I apologized for the embarrassing presentation by American leadership – Vice President Vance and Secretary of Defense Hegseth – at the security conference in Munich. It was presented as an open letter from American citizens to Global neighbors. Then I waited.

Within a short span of time, I had 35,000 responses. They are still coming in. All but a few – from American Magas and European far right fascist movements – thanked me for my transparent message in which I described exactly what is now happening in the United States. Those who posted were from countries around the world. Many have been long-time allies of the US. The responses were what I might have expected.

Many were in shock, finding it unimaginable that the beacon of freedom had disappeared beneath the waves of authoritarianism. Many felt this was the death knell of our country. Others felt betrayed and doubted if they could trust us again. Still others knew that millions of good-hearted Americans did not vote for this administration and that it does not represent their views. One after one, respondents spoke of their support of Americans in hard times, because they had been through hard times in their own countries.

I found many of these expressions heart breaking. So very disillusioning. And yet, I was also warmed by expressions of solidarity from afar. They are still pulling for us. Dubious, perhaps, but still hopeful.

I cannot even pretend to be neutral or patient in this time. Consider me an unapologetic part of the resistance against this extremist administration, one that places the United States in existential peril. There is no compromise. There is no middle ground. There is only prevailing over these anti-democracy forces, these oligarchs and theocrats.

I am part of the resistance. Will you join me?

Start here, with 5 Calls.

All it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to stand by and do nothing.

Don’t be one of those.

These Hands Give No Quarter to Forgetfulness

Posted: January 27, 2025 in Poetry
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Sandwich

Every time my hand spreads mayo

on slices of bread for a sandwich,

I see my father’s hands.

Long after the grandmothers left

following our mother’s death

the kingdom of men sullied forth,

the house of boys.

Every school day morning

our father made an assembly line,

bread lined up across the counter

on a long row of paper towels

adding one ingredient at a time

down the line, moving left to right,

cheese, bologna, repeat.

Add a bag of chips.

Place the sacks by the door

to be snatched by the inmates

of the castle of quiet grief.

At the time I was as mindless of his labors

as a dog receiving its morning ration.

Unless there was some interruption,

I had neither grievance nor gratitude.

But now my hands are older,

older than his were then.

Every time knife slides over bread,

I remember, a memory untimely born,

late but not too late,

saying the thought out loud:

You did well, I know,

though I never told you.

These hands give no quarter

to forgetfulness.

(Tim Carson, January 2025)

Could this be a 1933 moment?

Posted: January 19, 2025 in Uncategorized
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Democracies are fragile. A case in point is the Weimar republic in Germany following the First World War. Germany had suffered a humiliating defeat. The fledgling government was instable and conflicted. Paul von Hindenberg, a respected war hero, ran for President in an attempt to bring calm and confidence to the country. That move was not nearly enough. Under increasing pressure from right-wing conservatives, Hindenberg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor. The Nazis came to full power and the regime rolled forward.

One of the sad truths about that time and every time is that well-meaning people who act in civil and orderly ways and follow the rules, are mannerly right up until they hand over the keys to the tyrant-in-waiting. And tyrants have their most memorable wet dreams when they fantasize about all the ways they can manipulate a democracy to bring about its spectacular demise.

Hindenberg was one of those respectable, principled, well-intentioned people. He didn’t like Hitler. But he passed the torch, nevertheless. Biden, too, is a respectable, principled, well-intentioned man. He brought our country out of a pandemic, restored important relationships, championed legislation that made a real difference, and stabilized a country rocking from chaos with renewed democratic norms. But on January 20, 2025, Joe Biden will sit in an inauguration ceremony for Trump 2.0. All the signs are that every democratic institution and value will be at risk as never before. Regardless, Biden will demonstrate how civility looks, how power is passed off peacefully. In the end, though, none of that will matter, because like Hindenberg, Biden will pass the torch to one whose intention is to torch everything and secure absolute power for himself and his elite tribe.

Already, Trump is surrounding himself with absolute loyalists, lap dogs who will do his bidding no matter how cruel. They have been recruited according to plan. With a compromised judiciary and razor thin majority in the House and Senate, there are few restraints. Trump loyalists in the states are already attempting to mirror this reality. The new American Oligarchy of the super-rich are lining up on stage. This next Reich is not hesitant to break every law and use force against every opponent. The jack boots are on the ground, the police state on the way.

And yet, like Hindenberg and millions of ordinary Germans of that time, we stand by passively today. Respectful. Courteous and spiritual and thoughtful and evenhanded. All while the menace approaches, a threat for which this country is barely prepared.

If there is a call to prayer, it should be the kind of prayer that forms resilient ecosystems of value-laden resistance. Courage will be necessary. As will endurance. And the forming of communities that stand for the best and do not hesitate to speak and act for it.

It is easy to assume that the regime will not come for you. It is always someone else, but never us. Truly, the regime goes for easy scapegoats and vulnerable communities first. But then the culture of cruelty tilts toward making its actions normal. People hand over compliance too early and too easily. And before you know it the Fuhrer is beyond any power to defeat.

Call me cynical and pessimistic. I am not so by nature. But the realist in me, the part of me that actually sees what is happening, dares you to write this down and review it in ten years. I hope to God that I’m wrong.

Take heart. Be strong. Love one another. Don’t give up.

Trump Appointments: A Case Study in Christian Nationalism

Posted: November 13, 2024 in Uncategorized
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As Christian Nationalism ties its wagon to the rise of authoritarianism, we see patterns familiar to us from history, past autocratic regimes that merged with far-right religious movements. The substance of Christian faith is often replaced with an ideology of empire even as the empire coopts religious institutions for its own purposes. In the midst of this, we see how the designs of American White Christian Nationalism tilt toward replacing democracy with theocracy.

Since the President Elect has courted Christian Nationalists, a base that includes rank and file Evangelicals as well as radicalized ones, he is now rewarding political supporters by placing them in positions of authority and leadership. They very often lack experience or qualifications because expertise is beside the point. The same can be said of unqualified judges appointed to posts above their pay grade. The only measure of qualification becomes absolute loyalty to the supreme leader and espousing the correct ideology of the regime.

A case in point is the appointment of Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel. Throughout history ambassadorships in plum positions have been rewards for the rich and famous who have supported people in power. But the Huckabee move is directly related to Christian Nationalism and its implicit convictions about Israel.

Huckabee is a Baptist minister who served a term as the Governor of Arkansas and was a talk show host on Fox news. When Donald Trump states that Huckabee will bring peace to the Middle East, it is not peace in general or peace for all that he has in mind. This peace includes a particular political goal and a view of the end times as embraced by one slice of the Christian spectrum. In their end-times scenario, Israel plays a distinctive part; they need to be consolidated in Palestine as a precondition for the second coming of Christ. That means that Christians of Huckabee’s stripe have a vested interest in making sure Israel has that particular place and privilege. This goes far beyond protecting Israel as ally and friend. This is establishing Israel as a puzzle piece in their eschatological drama.

Jewish Zionists, of course, are committed to the Jewish occupation of Palestine as a part of what they understand to be their birthright, ordained by God. That means that Palestinians are simply obstacles to those designs, and must be expelled, removed from the land. Thus, Zionist settlers continue to displace Palestinians who have lived there for generations, establishing settlements in their place. This is often violent, with settlers relying on government privilege with no accountability. When tragedies such as the attack by Hamas out of Gaza into Israel take place, it provides even more fuel for the complete removal of Palestinians. When we look at Gaza today, beyond the response of Israel to protect herself and hobble Hamas, the actions go much farther, falling into a scorched earth policy – the decimation of Gaza in its entirely with no limits on the destruction and killing.

This is a far-right Israeli response under the guidance of Netanyahu and his military advisors. The action takes place under the auspicious of securing safety for Israelis. But the unspoken part unfolds piece-by-piece. The absolute destruction of Gaza is the prequel to the resettlement of Gaza with Israeli settlers, now poised on the border of Gaza, waiting to go in. This will be endorsed and enabled by the present Israeli government. It is embraced by Jewish Zionists without question. But there is another group that embraces it with equal gusto.

Christian Zionists, those who believe that Israel must take all of the land as antecedent to the second coming, are equally motivated. They want the Palestinians gone as well. But for different reasons than the far-right Israeli government or the Jewish Zionists. The end result may be the same, but they base their conviction on their own Christian grounds.

Do the Israelis know what makes Christian Zionists tick? Of course they do. They secretly disparage them for such hairbrained beliefs. But the Christian Zionists give them what they want: Total support for whatever Israel does in regard to Palestinians and an unlimited cache of weapons.

Mike Huckabee is one of these, part of the Christian Nationalist movement, a Christian Zionist, and a far-right political ideologue. When Trump says Huckabee will bring peace to the Middle East, it is not because they will pursue some negotiated two-state solution. No, they hate the idea of a two-state solution because it doesn’t fit their end-times scenario. Like Trump, Kushner, and Pompeo did in Trump’s first term, they will ignore the Palestinians altogether and never talk with them – and I don’t mean Hamas. I mean that the Palestinians will be disregarded entirely.

This is what Huckabee is being appointed to do. It fits with the vision of Netanyahu and Trump. And Christian Zionists who want this end-times scenario with Israel to play out in a certain way will embrace this as a divinely inspired moment.

This is what happens when autocratic political movements join with one version of religion. They override the concerns of American founders about religion being imposed on the public and religious dogma shaping public policy. Rather, in the interest of pursuing a church-state hybrid, replacing democracy with theocracy, they appoint ambassadors to political posts with the intent of transposing religious belief into foreign policy.

That is what is happening now, in real time. Uninformed and fairly self-centered Americans voted for it, reacting to prices that seemed too high, and the specter of immigration run amuck. Americans distressed about our country’s complicity in the disaster in Gaza staged protest votes against Harris, sometimes voting third party or not at all. The unintended consequences were inevitable. Protest actions helped a much worse option to prevail, a scorched earth regime to take power that will turn tragedy into something much worse.

One thing remains true and has been throughout history: This is how regimes emerge, especially autocratic ones, and how religion props them up to give them the illusion of legitimacy. Once religion enters into the formula, what was once a political conflict turns into a holy war, which is always the worst kind, bloodiest, and most entrenched.

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