For some time now, what appears to be happening is that people are treating their search for a church home the way they look for a new mattress or car. Besides the usual criteria– proximity to their homes, the vitality of various groups like adult education or youth activity, the personality of the pastor(s), whether or not they feel welcomed and plugged in, and even what’s offered in terms of on-site amenities– they base their decision on ROI, a return on investment of their time and, who knows, maybe their offerings as well.

Theology and doctrine seem to matter only to the extent that people hear what they want to hear and find support for their world view (heaven forbid our consciences should be pricked and our assumptions challenged). Otherwise these things don’t appear to be much of a consideration, even though they inform to a great extent what is seen and heard on a Sunday morning, and how a congregation views, behaves in, and interacts with the surrounding culture and world.

Maybe this is the direction in which the church needs to be headed. Not the whole consumer attitude, but the movement away from strict adherence to doctrine. And the deadly mantra of “we’ve always done it that way.”

Having said that, I believe no matter how unified the church becomes, there will be certain doctrinal stances that are going to be difficult to part with. Worst case scenario is a watered-down version of ourselves, which will not serve anyone. So we can’t lose justification by grace through faith. We can’t ignore Paul’s vision of a day when there will no longer be male or female, slave or free…

We can’t turn our backs on Christ crucified and risen. People of faith do have roots. We’ve come from somewhere, and it goes back way beyond local piety and traditions. If we are indeed searching for the heart of God, we need look no further than Jesus, who loved everyone and wasn’t afraid to get under peoples’ skin.

I don’t understand why socialism is such a dirty word. Well, I do, but the detractors are using it out of context and as a weapon to strike fear into gullible red-blooded Americans everywhere. Tactics, always tactics.

Granted, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are offering up some exotic and expensive program ideas that one would think don’t have much chance of becoming policy anytime soon. But people are running scared simply at the utterance of the word, without making any distinctions. They hear the word and think anyone who likes the ideas must be a Communist.

Who do we believe anymore? Who do we trust? It can’t be whoever has the loudest voice, because that would be Donald Trump, and he’s a special brand of idiot masquerading as a stable genius.

People who are trying to be perfectly reasonable get painted as radicals or communists, or just plain weak. These are people who recognize, perhaps, that human beings aren’t built for a go-it-alone, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps, self-made existence. Which isn’t to say people can’t thrive living in that mindset. It’s just that life becomes one long contest with self-involved participants. There should be a baseline of “winning” for everyone. And I’m not talking about the kind where everyone gets a trophy.

The decades-long Harvard study confirms that the healthiest people are people in relationship with other people. We are– forgive me– social animals. Social is in our DNA. One can argue for extending this to how we treat each other, how we think about our responsibilities to each other. And doing so doesn’t make us any less patriotic.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world only if we let it be so. The alternative takes a bit more work.

With apologies to all who revere the King James Version of the Bible- do you speak that way in everyday life? I don’t give a rat’s ass about how beautiful it sounds. Honestly, to me it sounds ridiculous and it grates on my nerves whenever I hear someone use it. It might be what people grew up with, but it was published in 1611. SIXTEEN-ELEVEN!! It was the language of the day. It’s not the language of today.

It seems people equate it with authority, for some reason. They fall in love with the cadence and sound but hopefully give surpassing regard for meaning, and implications for our life together. Because God probably doesn’t care about cadence and sound and elegance.

It’s neither elegant nor beautiful to me. It’s fingernails on a chalkboard.

So Alabama passed the most restrictive abortion law in the nation. They really are angling for Row v Wade. These people are, most likely, biblical fundamentalists (still a majority of white men) who have no clue.

I think what gets under my skin about this and pretty much the entire Republican agenda is that it appears to be driven by fossilized biblical views, making moral judgments based on narrow-minded understandings and just plain ignorance. Men thinking they somehow understand women and can still speak for them, maybe even keep them in their place. It seems less about reverence for life and more about knowing what’s right for everyone because the bible tells them so.

It’s risky, though perhaps convenient, to put all one’s eggs in the bible basket.

The longer things go, the more I realize that nothing is going to come of the dissatisfaction with the current administration. Nothing has stuck so far. There’s been plenty of lamenting and criticism, but it all seems to matter very little. Democrats can continue calling for Trump’s taxes, they can continue harping on his general ugliness and seeming ineptitude. But the longer we go, the more Trump’s opponents come across as so many Chicken Littles, claiming the sky is falling while the economy steamrolls along and no one gives a shit about much else.

While one party cries Constitutional crisis, the other does its best Alfred E. Neuman impression. It doesn’t bode well for the future, when (if) a Democratic candidate emerges as winner, and then the next four years are just more of what we’re already seeing– one party saying “up,” the other saying “down,” and nothing of substance getting done.

So Donald Trump thinks he deserves a two-year extension to his first term.

Who plants ideas like this in his head, or does he think of this stuff all by himself?

It was JT who once sang, “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time…” Everyone is always trying to figure out the secret of life. It must be desirable and elusive, this secret. But why the hell is it a secret? Makes sense that it would be something different for everybody. Or is there a universal recipe, some common list of ingredients?

Personally speaking, my life does not have to be a thrill a minute, one adventure after another. Please take a chill pill, all you adrenaline junkies out there. Afraid you might be bored for 30 seconds?

Personally speaking, my zest for life is bound- some would say constrained- by a belief that life is not all about me and my experiences. It’s not even about fulfilling dreams or (gag) being the best version of myself.

Maybe that’s part of my problem. So much of what passes for wisdom and advice so quickly sounds like self-serving platitude. Just well-worn phrases that quickly grow uninspiring.

When all is said and done, it’s about loving and being loved. Love may not be enough, though I’m not really sure what that means.

It’s about looking back and recognizing that one’s presence on earth has mattered to somebody else. We’re told over and over again that life is about collecting experiences, grabbing for as much gusto as we can. So life must be about appearances, facades, acquisitions, ladder climbing, achievement? Or it has to be this way until we feel we have everything we need, and then we can get off the hamster wheel and be who we really are, who we really want to be… which is just plain ridiculous.

The secret of life has something to do with realizing that we need not be constantly proving ourselves to somebody else.

Proving something to ourselves? That can be a different story.

It’s been awhile.

I have to remind myself from time to time that it really doesn’t matter what I write in here, and that I should just write, for my own edification and practice. It’s always been just an outlet and not high caliber stuff. It’s often reactive, opinionated, predictable. Lately it’s been political because how can one not have an opinion about what’s happening in Washington?

I need to find other subject matter. It’s not like there’s nothing else out there.

I don’t need pundits telling me to chill because what we currently see in Washington has been seen before. It doesn’t feel that way to me. Please don’t try to normalize this, as if there is precedent for what’s happened since 2016!

As far as I’m concerned, Donald Trump is, hopefully, a one-off, an aberration, a symptom, an ugly person who needs to go back to whatever he was doing before. It seems to me that our leadership has been infiltrated by the dark side. And does Congress ever do anything other than take turns investigating, accusing, and obstructing?

The whole Mueller Report release is a joke. Foxes in the hen house in charge of redaction, Barr a hand-picked lackey now claiming that the FBI was spying on Trump. Whatever truth Mueller uncovered will remain buried under layers of redaction and secrecy.

There really is little reason to have faith in our elected representatives. Even if they start with the best of intentions, it seems it’s only a matter of time until they’re caught up in the vortex of partisanship and stonewalling, and they sheepishly line up behind their “fearless” leader.

So is our indignation and concern much ado about nothing? Is it just the latest liberal fever dream, just a matter of “this too shall pass?”

Why does it feel like half the country was duped into believing that a slimy real estate magnate with megalomaniacal tendencies could be the one to break the logjam of “business as usual?” Why does it feel like the Democrats are still impotent, even with control of the House? Why does it feel like big business is still pulling the strings? Why does it feel like there is a consolidation of power happening before our eyes? How is it possible that people in positions of power and authority, blessed with above average intelligence, still dismiss climate change?

Is Stephen Miller as evil as he seems?

Why have things gotten so hateful? Why do we root for people to fail and fall?

Why does this feeling that something is terribly wrong still persist?