Truth-telling in the hill country of Missouri

Last week a juried art exhibition ended in Cape Girardeau, MO. As it happens, I had entered two drawings in the show some months ago; they were accepted which spawned an initial trip down to deliver the work and now, with its closing a trip to retrieve my drawings. It's a ten-hour drive into the Bible belt.

Best laid plans can go awry and such were my plans for companionship. In the end I made the drive alone - and I am so glad.

It was Thursday, August 8 when I began at 7:30am. Minnesota Public Radio runs thin before Rochester, MN. Classic Rock music has a place when singing along on the road, then Iowa Public Radio and versions of such meld in and out through the flat lands. The news of the day is grim.

There are shocking numerous reports, extensive articles on the Trump Administration's surprise raid of two chicken processing facilities where undocumented immigrants are working. 680 human lives are about to be changed.

I've entered Missouri and am considering the devastating impact of these raids. The children whose parents are suddenly missing, the folks with diabetes who aren't sure they'll get their medication when they need it and then a powerful, yet soothing voice rises from the radio and speaks. ". . . and I say unto thee, love thy neighbor as thyself!"

What world have I entered?

As I climb out of a lush, verdent valley, the news has returned and it isn't good. The death toll has risen in the two most recent mass shootings. 29 dead Americans. Human beings with lives, loves, children, hope, dreams. Already the politicians are speaking of the 2nd Amendment. The human hypocrisy is numbing. And we can't actually study 'gun' violence (some parts of the government can't even use the term since the Trump Administration came into power) because there are laws against that. I descend another long hill into the deepening shadows of late afternoon.

"For God so loved the world. . . "

My anger and the bile in my gut rises. I have not been a believer for a long time, but, I grew up in a Lutheran household. I studied the bible in depth at my Lutheran college and even considered Seminary for a time.

More than ever I believe the bible and all faith as it is practiced here in the world I see and live in is a soft cudgel of shame that supports White Privilege, Male Privilege, Capitolism, Sexual Predation and more. It supports a lie that part of the American way is for the good of all and that benevolence has a reward. In spite of words that pay homage to love, kinship, and generosity just look at the culture and morals of the country we are living in.

A little kindness here and there might get you into heaven (if that's what you want) as you watch the mostly hard-working impoverished poor, the immigrants looking for something better (who simply didn't have the good fortune to come out of someone's womb here), the black young men killed and disrespected over and over again by police who will be found innocent.

I only know one antidote. Thinking, learning, feeling, acting human beings deeply connected to their humanity. Now Trump and his team have destroyed the Endangered Species Act. Seems to me, humanity has been become endangered. Is it worth protecting the way it is?