Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

All these years later, I still don’t get it: the continuous adulation by my fellow Americans of former President Donald Trump. It’s called Trumpism. They’re called Trumpers. They number a solid third of all Americans. Some speculate there’s a real possibility that half the country or slightly more will vote him back in office later this year.

Just about every person I know loves him still. He’s got their vote. But I live in Texas. He’s got our state, too.

For years I’ve pondered the Trump phenomena—why millions, maybe a hundred million, of Americans young and old believe in him. Believe is the right word. It’s an emotional (or rational) bond. His followers (and that’s the right word, too) especially the poor truly feel that Trump represents them. Did they all watch his show The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice and chuckle at his gruffness when saying his trademark line, “Yah fired?” Doubt it.

Weren’t we all aware of his once handsome looks; three marriages with children; constant celebrity; magazine covers; enviable wealth and success; and his name stamped on his plane, NYC golden tower, assorted buildings (hotels, casinos) and many other products (books, board game, business institute, bottled water, steaks) and even international projects (state-of-the-art golf courses)? Doubt it.

All of us who disapprove of Trump and a second Trump presidency—and we’re a comfortable majority of Americans—are on the same wavelength. We’re not all Democrats or liberals but also Independents (what Trump claimed to be during his earliest presidential attempt) and a number of real-deal Republicans like Mitt Romney—patriotic Americans who think about character, intelligence and ability when choosing a U.S. President.

Four years later, why Trump?

Knowing so many people in my life—I’d say 95% of all family, acquaintances, and colleagues—who absolutely will vote for Trump, I stand back and ponder, incredulously, “Why?” Why don’t others see Trump, the subject of serious jail-time felonies and defendant in assorted federal and state trials, as the other half of our country does? We think he should never be President of the United Stages again.

Is it really our media divide, deciding to hear only what we each accept as truth from ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ journalism? [Psst. There’s no such a-thing.] Perhaps that is part of the problem. I won’t watch Fox—not after all their shameful wrongdoing following the 2020 election. I won’t forget that dead serious judgement against Fox, just under a billion dollars. What they did—maintaining 24/7 that Trump won and our country’s election was rigged—will be the greatest media scam and sham of my lifetime. Then there’s the 90 or so lawsuits against the former president for alleged illegal activities, one by one going to court practically every week. And the verdicts are guilty so far.

Decency is a character trait we should consider when choosing a person to vote for as U.S. President. And yet decency does not matter to those who support Trump for President. From the moment he started making campaign speeches, Trump mouthed on about his assumption that our government, the USA, was as corrupt as all others—that no American has a right to say or think that we (our form of government) are better than other countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and North Korea.

AND millions of Americans said Amen.

Not able to capture the Independent voters, Trump, a lifelong Democrat, ran as a Republican in the last election. Back then the Republican convention had a knock-down drag-out fight over handing the party to Trump. Yet he won their wholehearted support. Then he won the national election, by electoral college not by popular vote. It was so shocking to half the country that network reporters wept on the air and a million or so women marched in DC to protest the election of Trump. They did this because of his misogynist attitude toward women (the p word tape) and that he intended to overturn Roe v Wade. And he surely did.

Next thing we knew, it was four years of happy-pappy Republicans and assorted daily domestic and foreign political chaos while the rest of us managed to live low key if not ashamed in Bizarro America.

And now a third to half of Americans want to go back to all that … drama?

Which brings me back to my ponderance: Why Trump? Why him? His own native city and state can’t stand him & won’t vote for him. That alone should tell the rest of us something. Don’t any of us know Trump. Nevertheless, it’s ignored by residents in the ‘fly-over’ states.

I’ve always thought people like Trump because he says what they wish they could say—without admonitions of shame due to political correctness or something called wokism. People that like Trump love first his big mouth, that he says whatever the hell he wants, and they’re entertained by his televised speeches.

Since the vast majority of his supporters are white and older white people, I always thought his fans (and that’s the right word) would like to go back to the old days in America’s history when whites freely called Blacks the n word and called Hispanics the s word and women the b word and w word and c word. And they think people who are offended by racial epithets are the ones with the problem. I know what I’m talking about here.

No, the folks who support Trump, warts and all the alleged illegal shenanigans, follow him in a way that is beyond what makes sense politically and culturally. But they do have something in common: a collective pessimism about politics in general. They think or have grown to believe that it really doesn’t matter who’s the U.S. President. They think, like Trump proclaims, our country is just as dirty and corrupt as our enemies—all nations that are not free societies. They have forgotten—because Trump isn’t about to remind them—that Democracy is messy … but compared to all the other governments on earth, it’s the best choice for all humanity.

Instead, the American pessimists maintain a “Get real” and “Grow up” cynicism that binds together followers of Trump. They’ve lost faith in America as the greatest country that has ever existed (ironic given their MAGA caps). And they no longer believe in what made the U.S. great: a nation of immigrants, a mix of cultures, a free public education, a country where a poor person could work up to a good-paying job and middle-class life, where free press and free speech and no sanctioned state religion were considered sacred, where more sects of our society have been provided equality through constitutional amendments, where the people rule and not the elected officials including the President himself—and accepting and fully understanding and supporting the Balance of Power.

The support of Trump is not just a practical choice by his flock. It’s much deeper and personal—more like a religious movement. Trump always reminded me of Jim Jones. Still does. And his opponents say his followers have ‘drunk the Kool Aid,’ referring to the mass suicide by Rev. Jones’ religious followers or fanatics. ‘Drinking the Kool Aid’ means the followers gave up thinking for themselves. For some reason, they want someone to lead them and do all their thinking for them.

And in this country, that’s very dangerous thinking.

In coming to terms with our nation’s political crisis whereby millions would choose to support Trump over anyone else, I know most of his supporters are at heart good moral people, even church-going Christians, who cast their vote for Trump after praying to God for guidance—the same God I pray to.

Mom recalled a moment from her childhood: the days of black-and-white photos, radio shows, and the dark ages before rural electricity and indoor plumbing. The year was probably 1947 in god-forsaken Oklahoma. One day she was searching for her mother, pregnant at the time with her 12^th child. The search had an air of tragedy, Mom recalled, because her mother was always around the house and would never abandon all the other little kids of various ages running loose, the oldest already married with children of their own. Mom was 10. She searched all around outside their ramshackle house located in the poor side of a small rural community. She called for her mother several times, yelling loudly in the deep woods. Finally she spotted her mother standing at a creek, looking somberly, in another world, seemingly unable to hear my mother. Grandma had clasped the hand of her 11^th child, a two-year-old toddler, as she stared at the body of water, ignoring my mother’s calls—pleas by this time. She knew her mother feared water and drowning. Why was she so close to this dark hole? Where was she really?

Though Grandma eventually acknowledged her daughter and with my little uncle in tow walked way back to the house, Mom suspected her mother was thinking of suicide and taking her youngest with her for some reason. But this thought was left unsaid in the chores and rugged living when re-entering their life in the woods.

Grandma knew something was wrong with the baby she was carrying. It never kicked in the womb. Grandma spent more than two decades of her life either pregnant, breastfeeding or weening. She also had a few miscarriages before the change of life stopped her from getting pregnant all the time.

My grandfather was no help. The couple had been advised by doctors to stop having children. But sex was the most important thing in my grandfather’s life, a life that left him poorer than he’d experienced as a kid. Grandma said he was an indulged child and always wanted a large family. He got one but due to the fateful era of his working years, the Great Depression, jobs were nonexistent, and he simply could not afford to care for his enormous family of nine boys and three girls. Mom said the family ate meals at a large picnic table with the kids sitting on long benches, their father in a chair at the head of the table—shouting down the rowdy brood every night to listen to the news.

The most important thing to know about my mother’s father was he didn’t care enough about his wife, once a very attractive dark-haired and dark-eyed beauty with a round face and luscious lips who loved to Charleston and swing her legs up real high. After a couple of decades, Grandpa didn’t realize what a dozen pregnancies and births had done to her body—a woman’s body—not to mention her spirit. They married young. Grandma was thought to be 16, but ancestral research indicates she was likely 14. Mom said her mother knew she married too young but that her home life was “real bad.” What could that mean … except …?

Grandma gave birth for the twelfth time, a home birth or at least not a hospital delivery. The folks could never have afforded that luxury and in this case necessity. Then grandma saw it, the umbilical cord wrapped around the baby’s neck. The baby, oh alive but not kicking, had never received the nourishment needed to be a healthy human being. They named her Lynn. For reasons unknown to me, the little baby was taken in by a neighboring family with just one child about my mother’s age while Grandma recuperated. The baby was left with that family for an entire year. I was surprised to learn that fact rather recently. Then I realized that birth, that life, that devastation of a perpetual baby state for God knows how long, must have been unbearable for my grandparents. No doubt, they and the siblings like my mother checked in on Lynn every day. And when it was time for my family to take Lynn back home, that little girl friend of my mother cried no: “They don’t love her like we do!”

Earth Angel

My mother was the one who ultimately cared for Lynn, though attending school every day. For years Grandma was taken to bed, perhaps suffering a severe depression but also was physically ill. She bled all the time. Everyone referred to Lynn as a ‘late in life baby’ because she was born with cerebral palsy to an older woman. In those days, women of a certain age who had babies were thought to be too old as the ‘change of life’ was approaching. But Grandma was about 38. Still, a woman should know the best time to get pregnant and expect a healthy baby is in your 20s. By our 30s, things are shutting down, more so in our 40s, and more often things go wrong with the expectation of having a perfectly healthy baby. By ages 45-50, one in four births will have Down Syndrome.

Lynn never walked or talked and couldn’t sit up. Though a happy being, she was like a rag doll with no ability to grasp objects, no control over her bodily functions. She would never be able to care for herself. The family feared she might swallow her tongue. She was fed baby food and had to be diapered, cloth diapers in those days. She was bathed about as often as the rest of the family, perhaps once a week, then dressed and pampered, held and coddled, before placing her in her baby bed and lifting the rail so she wouldn’t fall out. She could not turn herself over, so family took turns turning her during the night. When lights were out, many times Lynn would cry. She didn’t want to be left alone in the dark. Can you imagine?

On Saturday nights after Mom had done all the family laundry and commenced to ironing all the clothes, she’d listen to the radio and sing along. She noticed Lynn, an older child by then, would pay attention, though Lynn’s eyes never tracked anyone speaking directly to her. She wasn’t blind. She could hear. She could grunt. She could laugh. And, Mom noticed, when she sang a sad song that brought tears to her eyes, Lynn wept, too. Mom thought Lynn understood the lyrics somehow. She thought Lynn was intelligent. And people with cerebral palsy are usually highly intelligent. It’s just their bodies work against them.

By the 1950s when Mom graduated high school, she had no intention of ever leaving her family home and expected to care for her baby sister, who grew to have a long lean body, dark complexion, dark hair, and wide-set eyes—the family trademark. But the older sister, who married young and was raising three kids of her own, wanted Mom to go away to college, an opportunity my mother was going to pass. My aunt talked with Grandma and Grandpa about Mom going away to college, and everyone agreed she should go. My aunt bought Mom a big suitcase and filled it with a few dresses, slacks, a couple pair of shoes, a coat and personally drove her to the bus station and saw to it Mom was going to have a future—without being the perpetual caregiver to their baby sister. Still, Mom would frequently return home to visit family and Lynn. After college, she got a teaching job in a town far away. Life for her was just beginning. She would soon marry and eventually have two kids to raise. All along, my parents would take Lynn home with us for a week or two every year. I vaguely recall the time, but I know Aunt Lynn slept on the couch. I remember how it was covered with sheets and perhaps pads in case of urination or the other, how Lynn was tucked in at night before we’d go to sleep. I guess she never rolled off the couch.

By 1969 my grandparents were dead, and Lynn had been placed in a nursing home in the family’s town, so the ones who lived nearby could visit her often. She’d been placed in a nursing home when family realized Grandma, thought to be an old woman in her 50s, could not take care of Lynn, an adult-size baby in many ways. In every way. My uncles had formed a country band and would set up at the nursing home and perform concerts. Lynn’s face would beam. She loved her family. Perhaps she understood, too, that among their own lives, they could not take care of her. It would require a total sacrifice of someone 24/7.

Then Lynn died. She was 21. Died in her sleep, we were told. She was dressed in a lovely nightgown in her coffin. I’d never seen a dead body before or my mother cry. Her older sister smiled and comforted her, telling her quietly this was for the best. Mom’s tears were bitter; she felt the family had betrayed Lynn, left her alone to wither away and die.

Many years later when my mother became an old woman, she recalled her thoughts about Lynn’s death in a nursing home. She had come to realize, she wanted me to know: “Nothing is what it appears to be.”

So … today with all the talk about abortion—whether it should be legal or illegal—I’ve always first thought about my dear sweet Aunt Lynn and the thousands of other lives born similarly and yes tragically every year: human beings who will always need care every minute of their lives. The great majority of families know absolutely nothing about this situation, cruel or at best bittersweet. Should our free society force this on families who, let me assure you, cannot cope with this outcome? Seems a strange position for the U.S. government or State of Texas to play a part in. This is not government’s business.

And let me tell you something else: When a person like Lynn comes around, notice how the public will pay her no mind. Heads turn away and eyes roll when a person as debilitated as she is rolled into the grocery store. People like Lynn cannot control their loud screams and grunts and gross sounds that little kids will laugh at while all the adults want nothing more than to pay for their stuff and leave—leave the scene, thanking God they don’t have to deal with this situation. They might even kiss the heads of their normal children for everyone knows there but by the grace of God …

Like the rest of the family, I’ve been haunted by the memory of Lynn. Mom sometimes would say she was a burden to the family, already dirt poor and struggling just to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table. I told her, “I think Lynn was her own burden. She would’ve died if no one fed her and took care of her.” Mom was silent. In Eastern religion, there is a theory about souls like Lynn who incarnate in a body that will not function. They think these souls have reached the highest spiritual plane; they cannot do anything, so they will never sin. They have chosen to live a life of utter dependence on family and humanity else they die. A cousin sent me an old snapshot of Lynn: lying flat on her back on a couch, her hair short, big widespread brown eyes, mouth open–just like I remember her. Then I noticed the position of Lynn’s forearms and hands, a twisted position she could not help. Each of her forearms was bent up at the sides of her chest and her hands away from her body. She looked like this all the time. All along, she was showing us her wings.

In the fall of 2003, I abruptly switched careers: from award-winning newspaper reporter and columnist to public school teacher. My teaching career has been more bitter than sweet. Yet I am proud of my work and occasional accomplishments, each day go in with the attitude of making a positive influence on a generation growing up in a time very different from my school days long ago.  

I wish the public knew or admitted what goes on when kids are in school. When it comes to students in mass, it’s as if there’s a strange temporary yet every cotton-picking day persona change not unlike Invasion of the Body Snatchers. My mother, who’d also been a teacher, would say when I was growing up: The way a kid acts when his parents aren’t around, that’s the real kid. Kids are different when they are among their peers, and they are the majority in a classroom. They maintain an ‘us against them’ (students against the teacher) mentality. And … so did the rest of us when we were kids, worse when we were teens.

Another thing I was surprised to find about teaching in the public schools is the consistent problem with heating and AC ventilation. One room will be super cold year-round while another blazing hot. Not a single room is a comfortable temperature throughout the school year. And if anyone’s reading: THIS HAS A LOT TO DO WITH KIDS NOT LEARNING. When a kid is physically uncomfortable, you can forget about learning taking place. So our public schools’ HACV systems really should be fixed – like these systems operate in the business world and homes. I worked many jobs in the ‘real world’ (the non-school world) and there were hardly any heating or AC problems. Our schools should be as comfortable as our homes, banks, churches, shopping centers, and all public indoor spaces.

Following my mother’s advice concerning discipline management in the classroom, I’ve started every school year with my foot down. My rules are short and sweet: Listen, Respect, Participate & Be Careful. And can you believe how hard those rules are for students to follow? When I first started out as a teacher, I just assumed I was the one with the problem. That’s what administrators, college professors and teaching experts would say. I read every book to be a better teacher, researched online articles on discipline management, and attended every course to enact better discipline including Boys Town. To no avail. Kids will wear you down from day one to the very last minute of the school year. It’s why few adults stick with teaching long enough to retire. The average timespan is five years, with the great majority of people ever trying the teaching field lasting one to three years. I’ve seen new teachers quit the first day, the first week, the first month, and especially never to return after the December break.

Teachers that have what it takes to make it a career, I think, truly love the hunks of time off: a few national holidays, two weeks for winter, a spring break and now somehow a fall break and the legendary summers free! To the real world, it must seem teachers hardly work at all. I think back to my real-world working years, with its standard two-weeks only vacations, often as I continue teaching especially on a hard day (which is most days). And when push to comes shove, really finding another job and quitting, I take a breath and say “Na.” As long as society puts up with all this time off (and I think parents really like it, too), nothing’s gonna change. In the 21^st century, we’re still not evolving to year-round school. I think we should. (Slap my mouth!) No really, I think we should. Year-round schooling would benefit students’ ability to maintain what they’ve learned.

Teaching: the hardest job

I look at the few teachers who are popular with their students. Kids of all ages light up at their sight, say hi and hug them, a mutual hug. I admire that characteristic. It’s uncanny. I can’t explain why some teachers (very few) are … beloved. I am not in their category, and neither was my mother. She’d always tell me as I continued this career that disciplinarians are not popular. Those are the choices as a teacher: the popular one whose students seemingly do what they want in their classrooms or the more authoritarian one whose classrooms and instruction are seemingly more structured. Parents have relayed to me their kids say I’m kinda strict. And those same parents respond to their kids, “Yea!” Maybe I’m on the right track.

Can you believe I’m still trying to figure out how to be a better teacher? Maybe that’s a good sign. I remember a bumper sticker when I was a kid: “I teach. I care.” That’s me. For now.

I’m getting older, well, my body is getting older, and I actually tried retirement a few years ago. It didn’t work out especially when the pandemic hit. You gotta have a lot of money to retire. So as we sang in the real work world: I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.

Seriously, as a career teacher, I’ve seen some sad situations my students endure when not in school. If nothing else, I want to take their minds off their problems and get them mentally and emotionally to a better state. I know as kids, they’re not in charge of their lives. Yet the ‘power play’ is with the teacher, the authority in the classroom. I’d say the number one issue with ‘problem’ students is: They think they’re grown.

Back in college, the Education faculty would tell us students they want us to be Super Teachers. And by that they meant: caring for each and every student, having some fruit or cereal around for students who say they’re hungry and let them eat in class, purchase a neglected child appropriate shoes or a coat if needed, have some plants in the classroom (because they help the brain with learning), use lavender scents (to keep emotions calm), design our classroom to be organized with colorful décor that appeals to kids or the age we teach, paint the focus wall darker than the other three walls, display items important to us so our students get to know us better and more personally (like photos of our spouses, children, pets, vacations, or pictures of us at their age), sponsor after-school clubs, attend students’ extracurricular activities such as sports and performing arts, and provide all their teaching supplies (pencils, pens, paper, scissors, rulers, etc.). Wow. All that with an annual salary back then around $17,000.

Nevertheless, when I took on my first teaching job, that is what I did. The kids were rough, from very rough neighborhoods. God knows what they endured when not inside their school. My intention, regardless of the students’ attitude toward me as a new teacher, was to be the Best Teacher Ever. On day one, I fell flat on my face. Despite my ‘governmental reporting’ background, playing hardball with politicians and elected officials from city councils to state legislatures and the boys in D.C. plus investigative and feature series, school was the toughest beat. Kids say anything anytime anywhere and especially to your face. They’re not polite. They’re emotionally hurtful and a few physically combative. I’ve been kicked, pinched, cussed out, shoved, bitten and scraped with a sharp object. My job was to be professional. I commenced to high standards even if a handful of my students participated. At my first school, I had a headache every single day from start to finish, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Bent over backwards

So within four years, I found myself at another school and pushed my students even harder for success—their success. And it was while reading the results from our first attempt at a UIL contest, where we/I failed miserably, that for the first time my back gave out. It was like suddenly a ton of bricks fell on my back. My backbone felt broken, twisted. I couldn’t breathe. I never let on with my students my back just went out.

And I should have. I should have been honest with them about the pain I was experiencing. That kind of honesty is what the popular teachers do. They tell their students everything about them. I remember those kind of teachers: They were usually young and attractive, sometimes single but then dating and soon married, talked to us about buying clothes or dating, dancing at clubs or seeing some famous music entertainer at a concert, getting a new pet, going on a great vacation, eating exotic foods at a restaurant.

Not me. My theory has been I’m there to teach not be the kids’ friend. So that day my back gave out, I somehow got through the class and called a doctor. Through X-rays, pain shots and prescription pain pills, there was nothing wrong with my back. The pain was unbearable and real—yet maybe psychosomatic.

Throughout the first half of my teaching career, my back went out at least a dozen times. It would go out after summers off right when we were getting ‘back’ to school when we should be energized and up for a new challenge but instead were told of new rules, regulations and teaching methods we must follow. My back would give out right at major events I was leading when I was relying on dozens of students, from assorted impoverished home lives, to show up and never knew if they would or not. Determined to keep teaching, the good news is my back hasn’t gone out in years thanks to chiropractic therapy. One advised against standing eight hours a day. (Principals expect teachers to be standing and walking around the room checking students’ work.)

These days the latest problems in the schools are students with phones and ear buds. Kids literally tune out teachers, not to mention the lessons. I appreciate all the countries (Great Britain and China, to name two) and all the states in the U.S. that are finally banning phones for students in school. Any educator could see the HUGE mistake letting kids have phones at school would be. Kids are not adults. Learning will not take place when a student is constantly checking the phone. Ditto for wearing ear buds … in class. I suppose the college kids do it, but these distractions are the number one reason why public school scores have dropped dramatically. Constant cell phone use has scrambled the brains of some people, like they’re addicted. I see it every day. It’s because they’re young, at the beginning of their lives.

Teaching through the pandemic—when teachers were expected to teach online and society actually presumed school-age kids would stay focused throughout online classes—brought to mind the ancient philosopher Socrates. He was the consummate teacher, showing us teaching and learning are best in person.

Twenty years in the teaching biz has taught me more about myself, traits I needed to correct or adjust in dealing with young people and all people. I know I’ve made a positive difference in the lives of some of my students, which number more than 3,000 by now. Despite the extreme lows and not near enough highs, the emotional anguish, being at the center of our society’s myriad problems—teaching has been an honor. And every day I’m still trying to figure out how to do it.

I thought the lady on the phone was asking what I thought about June.

“June?” I repeated, or thought I was, back to her, thinking this was some kinda prank. I decided to answer the phone in the first place as a break from housecleaning on a spring Saturday afternoon about 12 years ago.

“Yes, June. What do you think about June?” sounded like what she said, repeated brusquely with a distinct Brooklyn accent.

“June? Like the month of June?” I asked again, probably sounding every bit a dumb Southern hick, really trying hard to clarify what seemed a bizarre question out of the blue.

“No, not June. Jews!” came the reply.

“Jews?!” I asked, even more baffled about this strange question, and to me.

“Yes, Jews. What is your opinion of Jewish people?”

“Oh, you mean Jews, like the Bible & God’s chosen people?” I clarified, still unsure why in the world anyone would call someone in Texas about their opinion of Jews. Not that Jews don’t live out here and suffer through the oppressive heat and backwoods state government like the rest of us.

I answered positively: I think Jews are great people. I hold them in the highest regard.

Then she continued with what became an obvious survey that somehow included little ol’ me: “On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the worst and 10 being the greatest, where would you rank the Jewish people?”

I replied straight up: 10.

Then questions continued with ranking the Jews, Israel, the Arab people, and Palestinians in particular. These questions came at a time when not much was going on in that part of the world—not like it had been for decades, dominating nightly news: always the Israeli/PLO conflict. Always no peace between those two nations, those two ancient people. But that seemed long ago as Israel signed peace accords with a few Arab nations including the Palestinians. I remember the televised historical moment well: With our mouths agape, we saw PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, whose organization was known for terrorism, shake hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin over a peace accord during the Clinton administration. Things seemed optimistic back then. We don’t hear about the PLO anymore or Arafat and Rabin, both dead—Rabin assassinated by one of his own people for trying to create peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

When the surveyor questioned me about which side I was on: Israel or Palestine, that’s where I had to be honest and not so much solidly pro-Israel. In two questions, I ranked both nations or people at a level 4 or 5 on questions, especially about which side I thought truly wanted peace. She asked why. So I told her. I’ve paid attention to the situation from the news including 60 Minutes and other in-depth coverage in print, TV, radio and online reports about the two feuding nations (ancient hostilities than go back to Bible times—”Father Abraham had two sons: Ishmael and Isaac …”) and concluded both nations “give as good as they get.” She didn’t understand that expression and wanted me to elaborate. I said I don’t believe either side wants peace anymore, which would mean vowing to never war again. Neither side is willing to put down their arms or their emotional and physical defenses. I couldn’t blame Israel, I noted. The Arab world has always hated Israel, a speck of land on the world map—created internationally after World War II, for obvious reasons.

Then, aha!, the survey queried my knowledge of the Carter Center, which I support, and how I feel about President Jimmy Carter, whom I love. Now I understood how I was on a list to survey about Israel and Palestine. If I recall correctly, when pressed about the Gaza strip, if it should be returned to the Palestinians or if Israel should remain in control of the area, I said I think it should be returned to the Palestinians. I thought there might be peace then. I admitted to being extremely naïve on this subject—all of it. Who am I to have any opinion on it? I don’t live there. And whatever happened to the two-state solution?

But during the Trump administration when the U.S. suddenly decided to recognize the capital of Israel as Jerusalem and Palestinians in Gaza elected as its government Hamas—an organization that wants Jews cleared out of the Middle East for good—I knew war was inevitable.

Caught unaware

Where I’ve lived most of my life, north and east Texas, and having been raised by a blue-collar country music- and gospel preaching-loving family, I never heard the phrase ‘dirty Jews.’ Seriously, never. Only read it in school studies of the Holocaust and maybe heard it in movies. But in a graduate course called The Psychology of Hate, the Dallas director of the local Anti-Defamation League brought up the phrase ‘dirty Jew’ as if we’ve all heard it, like it’s some ethnic slur we all grow up hearing.

Not in my family. Not among my friends and neighbors. I’d say I never heard anyone even say the word ‘Jew’ unless talking about a biblical passage—even then rarely.

What I know of Jews is from comedians and their dry humor: Billy Crystal’s line when Jimmy Swaggart cried sorely when a-comin’ clean to his congregation about a sexual secret: “I’ve sinned against you,” Crystal mocked the reverend in heavy NYC Jewish accent, “I bought retail! So, sue me.”

Perhaps like most Americans, all I know about Jews is humor. The big-name comedians seem to joke a lot about themselves, their culture, their families’ struggle to assimilate into American culture—which Jewish people have struggled to do throughout history in every nation the world over.

Now … 1,400 Israelis were slaughtered and many more injured and physically taken away from their homes like it’s Nazi Germany.

Israel was caught unprepared. News prior to the Hamas attack was of a divided Israel with many public protests and half the country distrustful of its leader who many now blame for a slow effort to stop Hamas during the shocking murderous rampage which included rape and kidnapping. So until further notice, it’s total war until Israel or Hamas drives their eternal foe to the sea.

Meanwhile, those of us who are news junkies will see reports 24/7 every possible angle of the war, from both sides. Just like Ukraine, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The truth is we Americans are war weary. We just ended two 20-year wars, leaving many families without loved ones or returned military to deal with injuries, a third of which are unspeakably cruel and lifelong. We spent a generation of blood, time and treasure to war in the Middle East. American society will remain more angry and violent for a generation to come directly linked to the once-proclaimed ‘perpetual’ twin wars.

And what did we learn? We learned that our natural human instinct is to be at peace not war.

There is extreme controversy for supporting the Palestinians, thousands of them killed and being killed and removed by Israel’s military—or as Arabs say in that part of the world “by Jews.”

Why entire cultures of people hate Jews even to this day, I’ll never understand. But Israel’s response—ferocious and unrelenting—is understandable. They know their enemy … apparently better than they know themselves.

At 16 she didn’t mean to get pregnant. Her boyfriend pushed her too far one night. She wasn’t one of the lucky ones who got away with it. All she knew is her parents would kill her if she told them. And abortion was illegal in her state.

Walking around the neighborhood, she saw a small sign: Pregnant? Contact Maria. Afraid someone would watch her, she memorized the email address and string of numbers.

Back home, in her bedroom she pulled out her phone and called.

“Hello, how may we help you?”

In tears she tried to pull herself together: “I’m 16 and pregnant and live in Texas,” she tried to say.

“OK. How far along?”

“Two months,” she said, her voice breaking, her body shaking still from disbelief in her fate. “The first pregnancy test was negative,” she said, trying to let the woman with Maria know she checked early enough, that she had good intentions and didn’t mean for the pregnancy to go this far along.

“All I need to know is the town and state where you live. We can pick you up.”

“I live in Dallas. Texas.”

“Tomorrow at 7 a.m. you need to be at Milburn and Scott. Can you locate that intersection on your phone?”

“Yes. Who do I meet?”

“A car will pick you up. The driver will roll down the window and say they’re Maria.”

“How much will this cost? I don’t have any money at all. My parents cannot know about this. They would freak and hit me or something.”

“Cost is taken care of. You just need to get to a state where abortion is legal,” the woman replied.

“Where are you taking me?”

“You will told more details in person by Maria tomorrow. You can bring someone with you, or we will take care of you before and after the procedure. You will be gone more than 24 hours. You need to figure out a plan, something to tell your parents or others who may be looking for you. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said, still crying about her predicament, having to lie, having to travel with strangers far away for what used to be a choice no matter where you happen to live.

“Don’t you worry. Just be prepared. You’ll be well taken care of. Be at the intersection tomorrow. It’s a bus stop with a covered area where you can sit. Try not to look upset, or others may begin to talk to you and get suspicious. Tell no one unless you can totally trust them. Be careful. Goodbye.”

Funny, her name was Maria, also. She’s Catholic. She could not tell anyone, not even her boyfriend Elias. He’d want her to have it. He’d want to marry and start a family even if they’re still in high school.

Maria didn’t want to get married at 16 and then have a baby. All her life she had plans for her future. She didn’t want to raise a child, not now. She didn’t want to have a baby to give up for adoption either. This used to be her choice. A private decision no one would have to know about. She was hurt and felt betrayed somehow. What other rights can be swept away so suddenly without the people being heard or requiring the people to vote – something that directly affected more than half the population of a country as big as the U.S.? Abortion is now legal in Mexico, she thought, baffled.

She thought of telling her best friend, but she was a blabber mouth. She loved Serena but didn’t trust her with the biggest news, the biggest mess, the biggest mistake of her life. She could tell only one other person.

“Grandma!” she thought with a smile.

Grandma Dona would keep this secret. She knew because when she was a young girl, she had an abortion back when it was legal. She believed the new law overturning a woman’s choice was wrong.

Maria took a train to Grandma Dona’s house in a nearby suburb. “Hi Grandma,” Maria said, greeting the old woman, a recent widow, with a smile.

“Maria! I wasn’t expecting to see your pretty face today!” Grandma exclaimed happily, then looked deeply into her granddaughter’s brown eyes. “Something’s wrong? Tell me.”

Maria cried as Grandma embraced her and walked her inside the house. “I’m pregnant and having an abortion. I have to leave tomorrow to go with some people who’ll take me out of state.”

Grandma closed her eyes and looked up as if in private prayer. “You’ll be fine. I will tell no one.”

Maria kept crying as Grandma stroked her long hair. “Now it’s not that bad. It’s not your fault either.”

Then she held onto Maria by the shoulders and looked directly into her face: “You shouldn’t feel ashamed of yourself. This is not a baby, not yet. Very far from it.”

Then Grandma walked Maria into the kitchen. “Let’s think of a story to tell your parents,” she said.

“You don’t need to say nothing to nobody. I’ll take care of that,” Grandma said. “I’ll call them and say I contacted you because I was feeling poorly and that you would stay with me for a couple of days as I adjust to a new medication.

“How’s that sound?” she said brightly.

“It sounds good, Grandma. I’m so, so sorry,” Maria said, starting to cry again.

Grandma prepared a couple of tortillas, filling them with roasted chicken. They ate together, Grandma smiling at her granddaughter. “You’ll be fine.”

Grandma asked about who’s taking her out of state, but Maria didn’t want to say. “I see. I guess this is how it’s going to be from now on unless this state allows the people to vote on this issue or a lawsuit overturns the latest decision and allows women to make these decisions in the privacy of their own lives and families,” the old woman said.

“You sound like you’re mad at me,” Maria said quietly.

“No, not at all!” Grandma insisted. “It’s the law that now puts women in such dangerous and costly situations to get an abortion if they want one. It’s bullshit.”

“I’ll tell you something,” Grandma began. “When I was a young girl of 17 and terminated my pregnancy, it was the best decision of my life, not the worst.”

“Grandma!” Maria exclaimed, not believing the words she was hearing.

“Now I didn’t think that for many, many years. But I’m at an age where I understand life a lot better. Young girls having babies is just wrong. Especially if they don’t have their own parents supporting them or the young man who’s becoming a father when he doesn’t want to.

“I’ve seen a lot more trouble with babies having babies, young people who have no business having babies, than I’ve seen with young women who have had abortions.

“You live long enough, you start to see how life comes full circle. You won’t think of this as a mistake when you’re my age. You’re doing what is right for you,” Grandma said, “or you wouldn’t be doing it. I know my Maria.”

“Yeah, but Mom and Dad would yell at me, first for  getting pregnant, second for having sex, and now for having an abortion,” Maria said.

“Maria, they’ve not lived as long as I have,” Grandma assured, chuckling with a twinkle in her eye, “You’ll see when you’re an old woman like me.”

Grandma sent a text to Maria’s mother about her staying for a couple of days. No suspicions were aroused.

The next day Grandma Dona drove Maria to the meeting place and waited until she saw her get into the stranger’s car. She wrote down the license plate, just in case something went wrong.

Maria was taken to another vehicle and then given an airline ticket and told to meet a woman at a certain terminal section. She has red hair and will be wearing a flannel jacket. The two met and boarded the plane quietly, sitting together. Maria sometimes wept. Her companion looked at her with a comforting expression, saying, “It’ll be all right.”

“Can we talk?” Maria asked.

“Sure. What do you want to talk about?”

“Have you ever had to do this, you know, have an abortion?” Maria asked, then rephrased, “I mean, guess I’m being too nosy. It’s none of my business.”

Her companion would not say, just maintained a sympathetic look. “She’s not judgmental,” Maria thought, then understood why.

“Well, maybe you can tell me why you are involved in this new underground railroad to help girls like me get an abortion,” Maria said.

“I shouldn’t tell you too much about myself, you understand. But I just support a woman’s right to choose. That’s all. I grew up in a time when it was our option, our business.

“There were always large groups of protestors, even doctors killed, stabbed and shot, their families harassed, facilities burned.

“I knew they were wrong, just as wrong as they think women who undergo this procedure are, which is ironic, don’t you think?”

Maria smiled a bit. “Yes, you’re right.”

The Maria confessed, “I never thought I’d have an abortion. But things change when it’s for real. I know I can’t have a baby, that my boyfriend and I aren’t ready to be parents, not now, not for many years from now.”

The companion suggested Maria relax. The plane ride was short, a couple of hours. The less said, the better.

Maria, tired, closed her eyes. She was in a dream: A fetus on the floor looked up at her angrily, saying, “You never wanted me.”

Maria was jolted by the plane touching ground. She was haunted by the dream.

“You’ll go off by yourself, and a man in a plaid jacket will meet you,” the companion told Maria. “His name is Rudy.”

“I won’t see you again?”

“No. You’re in a state where you can now talk about this openly,” she said, “and no one will turn you in and people who help you in like Texas.”

Maria stepped out of the tarmac and saw a man in plaid. She walked up to him, and he smiled at her, saying, “Maria? I’m Rudy. Just come with me. You’re in a safe state now.”

He took Maria to his car where his wife was ready to drive them directly to a women’s clinic.

“Hi Maria! I’m Sara. How was your flight from Texas?” the driver asked.

“Fine, ma’am,” Maria answered, her mind still shaken by the angry fetus of her dream.

The couple sat in the waiting room as the procedure was performed. While Maria was recovering, Sara knocked on the door. “Maria, it’s Sara. I’m right here if you need me. Take all the time you need.”

“You can come in. I’m fine,” Maria told her.

After dressing, she turned around to Sara. “So, I guess it’s over. Except for the flight back home.”

“Yep, you can return to Texas now. We’ll get you back there in a few hours. You got a place to stay, someone at home who knows what’s going on?”

“Yes, my Grandma Dona.”

“Give her a call on your phone, dear. Let her know you’re all right,” Sara said.

Maria called Grandma. “I’m so happy to hear from you,” Grandma Dona said with relief. “When shall I pick you up? At the same place?”

Maria didn’t know, but Sara said it would be a different spot, this time outside of Dallas just to be on the safe side. “Grandma, I’ll have to call you when I get back to let you know exactly where they’ll drop me off,” she said.

Sara interjected: “Your driver in Dallas won’t just drop you off. They’ll wait until your Grandma picks you up.”

Maria was told she needed to wait at the clinic to ensure no signs of infection and was given a prescription just in case.

Before she knew it, she was whisked back onto a plane, traveling with a different companion, a much older woman named Chantall. “Have you had an abortion?” Maria asked, just wanting to hear from another woman who’d been through the same situation. Chantall said yes. “It was legal when I had it.”

“You were lucky,” Maria said. “This is so ridiculous, having to fly all over the country. How expensive. How does Maria raise money?”

“So many people support what we’re doing—and I mean people who have beau coups of money, honey!” Chantall assured. “Money for this is no problem, baby.

“It’s just all them states that restrict abortion, they’d love to do something to stop us. Underground Railroad,” Chantall said, put out. “I never in my life thought I’d be involved in something like an Underground Railroad—and this being the middle of the 21^st century. Seems we’re going back in time.

“But here I am,” she said, folding her arms around herself as if determined to win a battle.

“Proud to volunteer for this civil rights movement.”

The biggest generation America ever produced, the Baby Boomers, is dying out in typical grand and noteworthy style: 5,000 every day. What can we say? Our idols always were the late Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. Death, I can hear the older Boomers say now, is the greatest trip.

Though technically I am a Boomer, born at the end of the generation spanning 1946 to 1964, I never felt like I was one of them. In many ways, we don’t have a lot in common. But from afar, I always admired the hell outta the original Baby Boomers: those who remember the 1950s; duck and cover; the JFK assassination; The Beatles; Woodstock; the Vietnam War; integration; free love; psychedelic design; the peace sign; expressions like ‘groovy,’ ‘far out,’ and ‘sock-it-to-me’; hippies; rap sessions; all the drugs; and all the protest marches. What a happening—yet of which I wasn’t apart as a teen, joining them, like a late-in-life sibling, in the ’70s.

But I got an eyeful, thanks to TV (reruns) and shows watched in real time like “The Monkees” and “Laugh-In”—and some older cousins, the epitome of cool, Original Boomers, electric rock musicians since the Beatles. They grew their hair long and wore it in a ponytail. One wore John Lennon glasses.

My sub-generation of the Boomers thought our elder peers too old—like the kids confronting the hip young congressman in “Wild in the Streets.” [I saw the flick on video.] We laughed at their yearbook pictures featuring wild clothing and bubble words, the influence of acid trips we were told. There was a distinct difference in the drugs of the older and younger Boomers. Ours were less LSD, uppers, downers, and needles yet pot and cocaine a bonding staple.

The Boomers ushered in the most liberal era in American history. And you wanna know why? Because they were born into an uptight suffocating hypocritical joyless generation, their parents and authorities after World War II. After a lot of growing up, naturally the older Boomers saw the error of their presumptions. Someone has to be the adult.

Adulthood was a long time coming and a whole different meaning for the Boomers. Staying young (the long hair, the short dresses, the don’t-give-a-damn attitude, the hippie vans) was the way to be. Disrespectful was how shocked parents saw their offspring.

The reason I admired the Boomers when I was a kid was their … nerve: one, to experiment with drugs. This generation expresses no regret in past drug use. They knew some people would develop an addiction, not unlike their alcoholic parents or uncles. But not everyone who smoked a joint or tried LSD and other drugs would turn into an addict. They knew it and were right, for the most part.

I admired other liberalities of my older Boomer colleagues: sex before marriage & living together; more seriously, organizing and protesting the government; burning draft cards; demanding the voting age be lowered to the age fit for military service (18); millions of young people demanding social and legal change in laws regarding abortion and marriage—but mostly to end the draft. By the time the smoke cleared, I consider this generation most brave to fight against norms they didn’t believe in. One being war, any war, all wars. Many of the older Boomers became teachers of the rest of us, the younger Boomers.

Their music reflected their times … and in our days was played only the months when popular. There were no oldies stations. And when the oldies stations were created, they played the music of our parents: early rock-n-roll, pre Beatles, no ’60s. So there was a whole decade of the coolest music ever heard that I was unaware of. It wasn’t until “Soundtrack of the Sixties,” a radio retrospective in 1981, that I experienced listening to the great music of the older Boomers: full of innovation, talent, studio effects, sincere message, social significance. Let’s forget about the popularity of Tiny Tim and any weirdo who came along, which was a feature of the ’60s. The Boomers were … open minded. They gave everyone a chance.

For decades the adult Boomers dominated innovations in American culture, from the acceptance of jeans and halters to new ideas in raising children (sans spanking) and schooling (at home), vegetarian cooking, health food stores, holistic medicine, and even automobiles. Boomers demanded government change for clean water and air and better living conditions for everyone everywhere. They gave us Earth Day. Many Boomers went into sociology and government, to help people. They wanted to make the world a better place. Boomers were idealistic. From decade to decade, elected leaders became younger and younger and more ‘with it,’ able to talk with regular working people. When Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992, the first Boomer to hold the nation’s highest office, there were many who felt he was too young, though he was the age of John Kennedy.

There are criticisms, too, of the Boomers. That they were bad parents, producing kids who got into drugs and sex too young, producing teens with STDs and pregnancies. That they were too liberal with alcohol and drugs, rarely attended church, questioned the existence of God, left cable TV to teach their children and grandchildren to be cynical about life, to listen to music with profanity, to cuss aloud, to divorce, to allow their kids to get into so much trouble they ended up in prison—to want to be their child’s friend instead of their parent. So the Boomers are blamed for poor parenting and even worse for society providing no structure or morality for young people who desperately need it. The Boomers and their all-important freedom-loving trek through life turned our society into the array of filth it is today. Some say.

Let us not forget the Boomers were the Love generation. They loved freely and honestly … and they wanted to avoid ‘hang ups’ of their parents like racism and prejudices. Freedom was their mantra. Movies and music of their generation reflected their era.

And now, as a generation, they (and the rest of us) are coming to an end. This time for real.

As to be expected, the Boomers have prepared all their lives for leaving this world. They are more spiritual than their parents realized. As a generation, they lived their lives with purpose—and most notably—with joy. That is the old hippie adage. They were, and in old age, still are, a very beautiful people to observe.

The deal, U.S. Supreme Court, is, see, white America hasn’t totally changed their views on the races since the 1960s. The dominant, or domineering, race of this nation is still white. And not surprisingly to nonwhite Americans, racial prejudices and bigotry still exist. That’s why government programs like affirmative action used in considering employee hires and college admissions were created. The program was fundamentally necessary when created in the early 1960s. White people, time and again, have shown they cannot be trusted to … do the right thing when it comes to treatment of Blacks and other ethnicities.

Yet since the 1980s, a growing white segment of the U.S. population decided they are being replaced by other races in employment and college. Race consideration in college admissions was to be fair toward minorities by giving them a leg up, a gigantic break. Even so, nonwhite families still have far fewer members who earn college degrees. Affirmative action was a small way to open doors for nonwhite families who historically were treated like third-class citizens in their own country.

But the issue that made young white people cry foul was the college admissions’ practice of weighing applications including race: more points for the candidate who is Black or other minority, or simply not white. If two candidates presented the exact same credentials such as high GPA and exam grades, more points would go to the nonwhite student. That’s the simple theory thought to be unfair and the same method understood and overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Surely more thought was placed into college admissions than just race. After all, the intent among colleges and universities was to strive toward racial inclusion and diversity whereby all students would gain from each other in course lectures, studies, research, and class discussions—all the way to the locker room and dorm.  

Reversal of fortune

Reverse discrimination is what white college candidates claimed when they received an unexpected rejection letter by a desired university while a Black or nonwhite student received a warm welcome. This is the part that, repeated loudly through the decades, brought on the U.S. Supreme Court review. And, not surprisingly, the Court voted a firm no on this type of affirmative action.

I don’t or won’t claim to be a victim of reverse discrimination. But once as a job candidate, I was told point blank by a hiring authority that if the choices were me, a white, and a Black candidate, the Black candidate would get the job. The business was under the gun to hire more Blacks. I was shown the door and understood as a white person, I best seek work elsewhere. I didn’t file a lawsuit or yell discrimination. I accepted affirmative action. Always believed in it because I am well aware of white America’s bloody mean cruel not-so-distant past against nonwhite people. I also realized, no, I knew, as a white person, I would get a job and achieve my goals easier than someone who goes through life in this country with dark skin. I don’t know if today nonwhites think the same given our entwined racial history.

The move to reverse college affirmative action and diversity programs was called out during the Obama administration. Remember back then how everyone said, almost as a boast, we’re now living in a ‘post-racist’ society with the election of our first Black president? Hah. Seems many Americans forgot: The political pendulum swings hard conservative after a relatively liberal administration.

So with the Court’s opinion, now the ‘many’ white students who cried “Unfair!” when they were not admitted into the university of their choice may apply and surely be accepted. Time will tell. College is so expensive to most Americans, enrollment numbers have been dropping significantly—no more realized than statistics for white males. What’s that all about? And isn’t the high cost of college a much bigger issue than banning college affirmative action?  

Affirmative action was one way this nation showed we care about helping nonwhite people achieve what many of us take for granted: employment, housing, education. This program was created to make up for centuries of white treatment toward Blacks in particular, from slavery to racial discrimination, segregation, bigotry, economic deprivation, intimidation, harassment and lynching. Doing away with affirmative action and related civil rights laws such as the Voting Rights Act by the predominantly white U.S. Supreme Court says racial discrimination—whether whites are consciously or unconsciously aware of their actions and deep-seated prejudices—is a thing of the past.

Not in this country. Not this century. Still.

The FBI will tell us white-on-Black crime continues to escalate and remains the largest percentage of hate crimes in the U.S.

A college education was perhaps the best opportunity white American society could deliver, promote and encourage among minorities. But, no, we had to take that away, too. We never countered against cries of ‘reverse discrimination’ by self-important students who minorities see as winning the racial lottery, that is the great fortune of having been born white.

For more than 50 years, affirmative action did far more good than bad to Americans white, Black and other. I hate to see all that generational progress forgotten and played down—like it wasn’t important or vital to this nation’s well-being and survival.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with women who want to pastor a church. They should not be suspect as man hating, radical leftists or politically liberal. Their desire to walk with God publicly and lead others through life’s heartaches and hard times is sincere and noble. And women whose love of the spiritual life burns from the depth of their souls should be honored, encouraged, supported, and permitted. Instead, these few women are made out to be shamed, as if they should feel ashamed of their consecrated service.

The big news coming out of this summer’s Southern Baptist Convention was the reclarification that women are to remain silent in the church. Nothing new here, considering the organization once proclaimed its annual mission was to convert all Jews to Christianity. ‘What Hitler couldn’t do with The Holocaust, the SBC tries to finish.’ Isn’t it the same thing, just perhaps less cruel—destroying God’s chosen people? No, converting a whole people to Christianity has always been cruel one way or another.

And the same principle is involved in banning women from pastor positions. It’s more sinister than clarifying church policy.

What the ban on female pastors means is: women are sub human, a part of man yet never to be man’s equal. A teaching by the Apostle Paul is used to prove the point. According to the Bible, Paul once instructed a specific Early Christian church to keep their women silent in church matters. Through the centuries, however, other Christian denominations didn’t interpret the teaching as a must-do for women in order to keep them suppressed in leadership matters and in so assuming silent in family, home, finances and politics. (Why couldn’t women vote or hold elected positions from the beginning of this nation? Because women were considered air heads with no significant thoughts or ideas.)

What some men don’t get about women (or Blacks and other subsets of humanity) is women know they are human beings. Some men, given our collective history and goings-on today, seriously don’t agree. For a couple of centuries, the South used Bible to maintain slavery, saying according to scripture some people are just meant to be slaves. There isn’t a human being on God’s green earth who is meant to be a slave, an unpaid brutalized servant.

Great falling away

There is one solution to the SBC policy against women pastors. Change denominations. A few females may shed some tears in the process of tearing away from a church that has brought a life of joy and comfort, one that for the most part provided solutions and answers to every question. It’s as familiar as Christmas, grandma, fried chicken, banana pudding, dinner on the ground and singing old-time gospel hymns like I’ll Fly Away and Fill My Way Everyday with Love.

But when a branch of Christianity still believes half of humanity cannot serve as official church leaders? That’s just plain wrong. A study of Christianity will show major changes in thought and customs in the past 2,000 years. Let’s call these huge changes what they were and are today: a reality check. Times change us, often for the better.

The beauty is Christianity remains a major world religion. It is one that teaches spiritual faith in circumstances we don’t understand, kindness toward all people especially strangers, and (my personal favorite) loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.

The red words in the Bible should be considered the final say on matters of controversy. The red words say nothing about man’s superiority to women, women’s subservience to men, homosexuality, or abortion.

The problem, it seems, is what was not said in red.

[Psst. I’m thinking Jesus wouldn’t have a problem with women pastors. Seems so insignificant in the Big Picture.]