Wednesday, November 3, 2021

DO YOU BELIEVE IN.....

  Hard to know what to answer these days. What does one believe in anymore? Why are the issues of faith growing? Is there an inherent danger in the ongoing crisis of faith? If so, what do we do? Do we even bother to do anything? Have there been corollary problems emanating from these beliefs? Are they even beliefs or mere shabby attempts to pull the shabby wool over pathetic attempts to hide bigotry, misogyny? Hmpf!

More and more, conservative evangelical belief and extreme forms of right wing religion have fallen in line with the Trumpian calendar of griefs, laws, and typical Big Lies tenets and approach to life. Normally, one could say that religious freedom is constitutional law, but actually, the way it is going now is that the Church and the State are crossing that mandated separation of powers, mixing in where it does not belong, much to the detriment and worse for the country.

Notice I did not write - 'our' - country. More and more I am feeling once again, that this is not my country, but rather some bizarre reproduction missing huge pieces for a necessary core. As as Jew I am truly frightened, on high alert. As a woman I am threatened, afraid of being 'afghanasized', doomed to a return to chattel law, in the face of  increasing outspoken opinion of so called political leaders, their deluded followers, particularly extreme evangelical churches, how stupid and incapable women are, how they cannot be allowed to control their own bodies, and what next? They cannot control anything? They cannot enter fields where they compete with men? No higher education, perhaps none at all? Where and when  does it end? Or doe it not?

Do I continue to believe in the inherent strength of the body politic of this nation? Difficult, when I read of crowds of humanoids awaiting the revival, the return to life, of JFK, Jr., who will then run for office with Trump. I kid you not. And these are our voters? Is it the water out there? Boll weevils in the brain? Where do we put our once almost unassailable belief in the wall of protection around our nation based on the integrity of our elections. our body politic, along with the bodies which make up that body politic?  

How do we believe in a Supreme Court of Justice, when Lady Justice is relegated to a dusty rear closet, never aired, never referred to? When the Judges of this court make decisions based on biased foundations, personal beliefs, from decisions of two alleged perverts? When they seemingly support right to choose if they disavow the Texas law, and in so doing actually leave a wider door open to the total banning of Roe v. Wade altogether. So much for women, those uppity beings who believe they are equal. Tsk, tsk. 

Wire hangers, anyone?

Those of us who retain our sanity believe that the truth will out, but how much more difficult can it become? Read and decide on each paper of the Archives individually? A crass attempt to postpone forever the truth and the consequences of those truths. Not a game, and all too real.

Whom do we trust? Our religious leaders are mixing into politics, many being exposed as perverted victimizers of women and children, unable to keep their own values and beliefs intact, tarring, unfortunately, even the pure ones. Our political leaders have long ago succumbed to the siren call of power and lust. Lost cause there. So where do we turn for succor? Perhaps nowhere. And that is the honest to god truth, the reason for despair in many Americans, the wave of hopelessness that rolls across the land, and the extreme, futile, dangerous attempts to alleviate it all. Danger ahead! Not even so much ahead.

A riddle. A conundrum. An enigma. A mystery. All not wrapped around each other, but rather enmeshed in each other, so much more difficult to unravel. Perhaps, possibility, with probability growing, of its impossibility to indeed unravel and smooth out. 

My sense is we are running out of time. We are running out of beliefs. We are running out of positive possibilities and running headlong into negative probabilities. Bad news. Bad news indeed.

Belief is powerful. As the people of the Jewish nation awaited certain gruesome death in the gas chambers, or at the edges of forest abysses, or at man made pits, or as they took on the might of the Nazi army with their smaller partisan forces, as they held tight to their little ones, to their elderly parents, to loved ones, they sang Ani Ma'amin, I Believe, a song of hope that goodness will prevail, the Moshiach, the Messiah, will come. They sang Shema Yisroel, Hear O Israel, the Lord our G-d, the Lord is One. That belief in the eye of death is difficult. Can we begin to approach that level of belief, in our ability to turn this mess around?

Dear Lord, but I hope so, I truly do. Do I believe that it will happen? Go away Do not ask me that right now. 

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