A Civil War?

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.  And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all authority; for it has been given to me, and I give it to anyone I please.  If you then will worship me, it will all be yours.

Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'" 

-Luke 4: 5-8

When Christianity Today, published their editorial by Mark Galli, calling for the impeachment and removal of Trump, I felt a little like Luke Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi, after Vader turns on Emperor Palpatine and chucks him into the core of the second Death Star, "I knew there was still good in you." But I also recognize that such a stand by a conservative evangelical publication has a cost, and given the strictures of the publishing business, I hope we don't have to build a funeral pyre for CT soon.  Red Letter Christians, an evangelical group with whom I share much more natural affinity, has been on this bandwagon for a while, but they reiterated their disapproval of the mendacious scam of the last three years. 

Of course Franklin Graham doubled down on Trump, claiming that his Father, despite being bed-ridden and of anything but sound mind and body in November of 2016, somehow voted for Trump, a claim that was quickly twitter-slammed by other members of his own family.  Jerry Falwell Jr., Franklin Graham and their ilk are not going to abandon Trump any time soon, and are indeed still shilling the whole "chosen one" angle, which is quite frankly blasphemous and entirely contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

First of all, the actual "chosen one," Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, was given the opportunity to rule the kingdoms of the world, and he solidly rejected it.  The false teachers will tell you it was because he was too wise to trust Satan on such a thing, that he knew the promise itself was a lie.  But that's only partly true, Jesus also knew that power of the sort that was being offered was a lie in and of itself.  If you think you can accomplish the goals of the Kingdom of Heaven by using the tools of the devil you are actually not a follower of Jesus, you are a sorcerer, who arrogantly believes you can control the dark spirits of power and violence rather than have them overcome you.  Hate, does indeed appear to make you strong, (Star Wars' fictional religion does have some moments of truth).

What I hear from those who still, even after all this, support Trump is some version of a Faustian bargain: "I don't like him, but he gets things done," even if he demonstrably does not get much of anything done other than make a general mess of things.  Or perhaps it is the "lesser of two evils" argument: "he's better than Killary, or Nancy Pelosi," both of whom happen to be rather shrewd, successful and female, but it's not just that, it's (insert poorly disguised excuse for sexism here).  Finally, there are the people who actually do believe, probably thanks to Fox News, that Trump really is the strong leader they have been praying for, rather than a global laughing stock who traffics in fear and division at his own expense and to the detriment of our democratic republic.  The reason, I think they are willing to be so willfully blind is because they have let hatred infect them so thoroughly that not only do they disagree with "liberals," they deeply wish to "own the libs," and believe that without someone to defend them against the "lefties," they will be doomed to live under the rule of atheists and communists. Honestly, I pretended to be asleep while that conversation was going on, rather than try to argue with them.

The question that is on my mind lately though is, "Can we have this argument/fight/war in a civil manner?"  It seems to be devolving into shouting matches, and "call outs" at worst and arrogant dismissal of opposing viewpoints at best.  I have said many times over the past year that I really miss George W. Bush, because while I often took issue with his policies and his warmongering, I never felt like I was dealing with a cult.  Cheyney was unnervingly evil, but he was just the Veep and W. was honestly unlikely to be impeached for anything, or kick off early.

This is the bargain that has been made by a certain segment of the Christian Church in America, for the illusion of power they have abandoned Jesus, they have rejected his example, from how he resisted the temptation of the Satan to how he willingly laid down his life.  When did Jesus grab for power? Never.  When he was offered the kingdoms of the world, did he take them? No. When they tried to make him king, did he accept? Also, no, he dodged them.

I found a passage that comes from one of Wendell Berry's Sabbath poems, I used this as our prayer of Confession on the "low Sunday" that falls between Christmas an New Years:

Hate has no world.

The people of Hate must try to possess the world of love,

For it is the only world,

It is Heaven and Earth.

But, as lonely, eager hate possesses it, it disappears.

It never did exist.

And Hate must seek another world that love has made.

Jesus showed us the way that love must move through this world, as a stranger and an alien, it has no home in the world of power and violence.  The Kingdoms of the World are illusions and lies compared to the reality of Love.  If we love we know God, and we are in Christ.  If we think there is another bargain to be made, we do not know the truth.  What Wendell apprehends is that Hate cannot own, dominate or pollute Love, what he sees though is that Love will not even use the tools of Hate to defeat Hate itself, it simply disappears and remakes (resurrects) the world once again.

A Proverb

One who justifies the wicked and one who condemns the righteous

are both alike an abomination to the Lord.

-Proverbs 17: 14

I have not written here for quite some time.  Part of the reason for this is that I have been spending a greater share of my time exercising my body, and less time sitting in front of a computer.  But honestly, I could have found the time if I so chose, I just didn't choose.  The reason for this silence is in part that I just don't know if I have anything of value to say about the events that have dominated the past several months.  I have been following the inquiries and the testimonies, I have been watching the Tweets and posts, and it would seem to me that there is pretty clear evidence that our not-so-beloved leader is a corrupt person, but then again, I knew that in like 1998, this is not new information.

I have some measure of confidence that our Republic will survive the impeachment.  In fact, I have been given confidence in watching William Taylor, Maria Yovanovitch, George Kent, Fiona Hill, Alexander Vindman, and even in a strange way Gordon Sondland.  The thing that became clear to me was that these people, even Sondland, all had a clear sense that something was rotten in Ukraine.  None of them are what you would call liberal, let alone leftist.  Most of them, Sondland being the exception, are career government people, call them bureaucrats if you want, but they are professionals whose training and experience qualify them to deal in international affairs on behalf of our nation.  Even the lone Trump booster, Sondland, seemed to realize that the gig was up, they had been caught doing something that probably has pretty severe consequences and seemed to apprehend that lying to Congress was going to put him in the pokey with Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone (eventually).

What I am not so sanguine about is whether or not our commonweal will ever be what it was four years ago.  Trump has erupted with what George Will colorfully called "a Vesuvius of mendacity." The man just rarely tells the truth.  This is, of course, entirely consistent with who he is and who he has always been.  I spent a good deal of time being angry with people who voted for Trump, which includes some people I actually love very much.  At this point though, I feel sorry for them, because if they have an ounce of perspective and are paying attention to any sources other than Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, they must realize that they were conned.  They were conned the way that all the people who did work for Trump and didn't get paid were conned, they were conned the same way all the students at Trump University were conned, they were conned the same way that apparently the entire Republican Party is being conned.

In the process of duping his way to an electoral victory, Trump has had to up his game from simply sly mendacity to outright demagoguery.  Now that he is out there on that thin ice it is far too dangerous for him to back up or admit that he is a sham.  He simply must continue to erode our common conception of the truth.  And the thing is, he has help.  He has willing co-conspirators in his assault on objective truth.  I feel like history will not be kind to Mitch McConnell, Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes, or even Mike Pence (who might actually be President for a minute before January 2021).  They will be the Spiro Agnew and Gordon Liddy of this debacle.

This is what worries me though, their calculus in allowing themselves to be rolled up in this sewer sandwich is a cynical political decision.  They know that there are still enough MAGA hat folks out there to last them through the next election cycle.  And the worrisome thing is that I suspect they're right, which means that our collective sojourn in the land of lies and half truths is not over.  Even if Trump gets his orange posterior handed to him next November, even if we fire the firer in chief, there are a lot of people who have hitched their wagons to the engine of falsehood that has been pulling this manure wagon through our society.

Our collective sense of trust is going to take time to rebuild.  We can't have another Trump, or another Clinton, we need more politicians like Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter, people whose integrity is not in doubt, even if you disagree with their policy.  We cannot accept con men, even if you think they will get you what you want.  I know, this sounds unrealistic, but it is in fact the supposition upon which our Constitution is founded, that our rule of law would constrain the raw greed and self-interest inherent to our worst impulses and a search after a "more perfect union," would elevate us to be more than just savages who look out for number one.

Jesus said that a bad tree will bear bad fruit and a good tree will bear good fruit.  He was very insightful about such things, even if you're not a person of faith, you can trust him on that one. Look at the fruit: indictments, prison sentences, world leaders (even Boris Johnson) laughing at him, cruel policies towards the poor and the immigrant, and to top it off our modern equivalent of Scribes and Pharisees saying how he might even be the chosen one.  A good economy is not the only measure we should be taking of how things are going.  How does this feel?  To me it doesn't feel good, it feels like, well... an abomination.

I'm going to be quiet again for a while, sanity requires it.

Well, The Earth Died Screaming, While I Lay Dreaming

But the Lord said to me, "Do not say, 'I am only a child';

For you will go to all whom I send you, and you will speak whatever I command you."

"Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to protect you."

-Jeremiah 1: 7-8

By now you have probably experienced the moral Rorshach test that is Greta Thunberg.  She is the sixteen year old Swedish girl who started going on strike because of our abuse of the environment.  She also has Asperger's which is now technically classified on the Autism spectrum.  Greta sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in a solar powered boat to address the UN in New York City on the subject of climate change.  She is quite frankly pissed off, and I for one do not blame her one little bit.  I sometimes wonder why my children aren't more angry about what we have been doing to the planet they will have to live on.

My political leanings are primarily motivated by an interest in two main pillars: the first is human rights, the foundation for this is my understanding of the Gospel imperative to love your neighbor.  I am not so much interested in left/right, liberal/conservative, platforms as I am pursuing a just society that upholds the dignity and commonwealth of all humanity.  Both political parties routinely let me down on this front.  The other pillar is environmental stewardship, which while it certainly does have a Gospel component of loving neighbors, goes even further back, to the very beginning when God created us to be caretakers and stewards of a good creation.  This is primarily the reason why, in the middle of the George W. Bush era, I switched my registration from R to D.  Because climate change denial was becoming frankly insane.  We were starting to see the effects, the science was mounting up.  If you attach the label "conservative" to yourself you should be interesting in "conservation." The party had plenty of cover and reasons to get on the right side of the environmental debates, they have overwhelming support among outdoor types (there is overlap with gun rights) and farmers, whose very livelihood is tied to care for our living biosphere.  This should never have become a left/right battle, but there is this little thing called capitalism that means money rules, and fossil fuel companies have a lot of it.

I could go on for a rather long time with details of how our addiction to burning things for energy has corrupted us.  The disastrous politics of the Middle East, human rights catastrophes and even the more moderate estimations of the long term effects of climate change should inspire any actual conservative to the same kind of anger that Ms. Thunberg demonstrated in the UN when she glared at world leaders and said, "HOW DARE YOU!"

We need to listen to Greta, she has no reason to lie to us, and her personality and disposition means she has no interest in being anybody's sweet little eco-princess.  Yet, again we choose up sides and start sniffing armpits and a bunch of full grown people with pretty solid educations decide that this little girl, sorry young woman, is somehow a threat to them, and they go on the attack.  That's because she's a prophet.  I have no idea if she's religious, probably not, but she's a prophet.  I talk a lot about prophets in this blog because I think they're important, and because we don't have enough of them.  Prophets don't have to have the solution to the problem (though sometimes they do), they don't have to be the perfect messenger, they can be broken and faulty people themselves, all they have to do is speak what the Lord gives them to speak.

I believe that whether Greta knows or believes it or not, The Lord has given her that message, "HOW DARE YOU!" She is not a puppet or some kind of apparition ginned up by the lefty tree huggers.  Tomi Lahren is what happens when a political ideology manifests in a well decorated incarnation.  Greta is what happens when the Spirit of a Loving Creator decides to speak through a human being.  God never picks the "perfect" messenger.  Abram and Sarai were too old, Moses stuttered, David was an adulterer, Jeremiah was too young and a bit off (sort of like Greta), Amos gave zero junk, Hosea married a prostitute, Jesus was from Nazareth, you get the idea.

Listen, you that have ears.  Observe the reaction from the system, you that have eyes.  No matter what happens from here on out, a message has been delivered concerning our performance as stewards of God's creation, and it is an angry voice saying, "HOW DARE YOU!"

Twenty

On September 18, 1999 Michele Jackson and I got married at Merchantville Presbyterian Church in New Jersey.  The world was a different place then, we got hitched just before the end of the millennium, and a lot of people were stressing about a thing that was just called Y2K.  It was based on the idea that all these new-fangled computers wouldn't know what to do with themselves when all of the sudden they faced a double zero in the year column.  People predicted that electrical grids would crash and we would be cast back into the age of analog because all of our technology would basically have a nervous breakdown because of the impending double zeros.
As it turns out, it didn't end up doing much harm, if any. I guess one of the things that life has taught me in the last two decades is that the things you worry about are rarely the things that are really dangerous or difficult.  When you get married, you pledge to live your life with another person, to share in whatever comes down the pike, "for better or worse, for richer or for poorer...".  That's a bold promise to make and is usually only possible for people who are in a delusional state called love.
Sure you probably have some idea that there might be struggles.  If you actually have a professional clergy-person (such as myself) performing the ceremony they will probably have insisted that you get counseling of some sort prior to the event.  The primary purpose of this counseling is to let the people, who are living within the pleasant delusion of love, know that this thing called marriage can be difficult.  While they may, especially if they are young, assent to the sensibility of what you say, they will not really believe it, because surely they are different than everyone else and their love is oh so much stronger.  They will hear your admonishments that they need to learn to forgive and be forgiven, they will listen to whatever conflict management pyscho-babble you throw out there, and they will still walk down the aisle blissfully ignorant of anything that is going to happen after the reception.
In my line of work, I not only perform weddings, but I am in a position to observe marriages at all phases of life.  I see young parents trying to keep their toddlers clothed and reasonably quiet during church, I see families with teenagers trying to deal with monosyllabic "conversations," I know people going through fertility problems, people who have lost children, I have seen people married for longer than I have been alive dealing with the illness and death of their spouse.  Every one of those challenges, and the deep and meaningful variations on those challenges is a struggle that you cannot possibly be ready to face.
And yet, you do.
In the process, you change what you call love.  Love is no longer a pleasant delusion, it is a rock solid reality.  Marriage, if you stick it out long enough, clearly becomes an act of faith.  This is why churches, synagogues, temples and holy orders have been involved in something that is really on the surface just a civil arrangement. Faithfulness or fidelity is the core of what holds people together.  It is the promise of love.  Infidelity is the only grounds for divorce that Jesus recognizes, but that in and of itself, is a bigger idea than we generally recognize.  When you say the word "infidelity" in the context of a marriage you immediately envision "cheating," but that's far from the only way one can be unfaithful to a marriage.
You become unfaithful when you lose your faith in what you are together.  Sometimes it's stress that does it, one of those myriad challenges that we face as we go through life.  Other times it is just the numbness that comes with time and familiarity, people find themselves taking the other for granted, feeling easily aggrieved and set upon by the demands of another actual person, and absent of the pleasant delusion it becomes untenable.  The way to stay faithful is to take a minute to recognize the uniqueness of the one you Love, and to appreciate the Love they have for you as well. Acknowledge that both of you deserve to Love and be Loved, and what you were really doing way back when was promising to make that happen.
It has been twenty years since Michele and I made that promise.  We're still working on it.  When she changed her last name to mine, she kept the middle name her parents gave her rather than just bumping her maiden name back a space.  After twenty years I can't think of a better word to have in the middle of everything.
I love you Michele Faith Gaskill.  Happy 20th.

Travels in America

John Steinbeck once set out on a journey across America in a custom pickup truck camper named Rocinante after Don Quixote's horse and his standard Poodle named Charlie.  Last week I set out on a less quixotic journey in my Volkswagen with my wife and two teenagers.  Still, when you travel you almost can't help but learn things, experience things and come back a little different than you were when you left.  Steinbeck's overwhelming assessment was that America was so very full of good people, but our publicity is terrible.  Travels in America with Charlie, was written in a seemingly different age, but it seems to me that America retains a very similar character.  We are better than we look, we are kinder than we sound, and we are more welcoming than you might imagine.
Our little family covered quite a bit of ground, Pennsylvania, to a little town that was our home for ten years, all the way across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and then into Wisconsin.  We stayed in a place on the edge of a tourist destination, skirting around the water parks and amusements of the Wisconsin Dells, never actually getting very close to them.  Then we went to Chicago, the second city and seemingly ate our way through that town like a hungry caterpillar.  Finally, we spent a night in Cincinnati, an act which inspired curious consternation among all who heard of it. Then we took the scenic route home through the hills of Kentucky, the mountains of West Virginia and Virginia and back home to the tidewaters of Maryland.  In between those places were the vast miles of interstate highway, across flat lands that reminded me of the Meseta.  The sky was the landscape and the clouds were all there was to see.  But of course this was America, and so there was advertising as well.  Advertising for food, for lawyers, for God himself.  The advertising for God was striking, and unsettling, to a traveling preacher.  It sent me back with a sermon illustration at the very least, but also I think, with a bit of a prophetic vision of something that needs some fixing.
The lectionary texts for yesterday were from Isaiah 58 and Luke 13.  The Isaiah text describes the way that God's people are supposed to change the world for the better, to have their "light rise in the darkness," to be "repairers of the breach."  Luke tells the story of Jesus healing a woman on the Sabbath and invoking the predictable wrath of the religious folk because he broke the rules.  In the Gospel, the masses of people seem to have the good sense to rejoice in the healing and grace of God, it is the synagogue leader(s) who are shamed by their own hypocrisy.
Out there in America, I have seen so many little churches, who I do not doubt are doing good things, working to help their neighbors and create community and common good.  Then there are the billboards that seem to be trying to get people to be scared of God, and Hell and proclaiming judgment.  It produces a sort of cognitive dissonance that is becoming all too familiar.  It is not new, it was one of Steinbeck's major observations on his travels: America is more than what she seems.
Maybe it's just that old truism that Yeats pointed out:

The best lack all conviction;

The worst work with passionate intensity.

It's tempting to believe that, but I don't think the best lack conviction at all, they're just not interested in billboards, marketing schemes and branding.  This is why social media has become such a toxic sludge, because the good and the wise have learned to disengage from it.  On some rare occasions, a prophet arises who can use the tools for good, a Shane Claiborne or a William Barber III, masters the art of dancing on the cess pool without sinking, but it is more miracle than skill.

Too much of our public discourse has been taken forcibly by those who shout the loudest.  But America is a decent place that deserves better publicity.  We are not a nation of backward, bigoted, angry people, even if our figurehead wannabe emperor is exactly that. I'm not looking at this thing through rose tinted lenses either.  I saw the good, the bad and the ugly on our little jaunt through the Rust Belt and the Midwest and the upper south.  I saw lots of places where people still make things and I saw the new, clean, renewable technology that harnesses the wind to make us go.  I saw some really poor places and some ostentatious signs of wealth as well.  I saw signs of strip mines that had scoured the tops off of beautiful mountains, and I saw those mountains slowly turning green again.  We stayed in a neighborhood that was bustling with people who spoke Spanish and worked on a tricked out low riding van parked in the street, we smelled some really good things being cooked as we walked down the street.  They didn't seem like people who didn't belong here, they seemed like people who were the reason this country is great.  We also stayed in a neighborhood that is on that precarious turn from decay to renewal, and may either become something really vibrant or may simply gentrify.  We saw quite a bit of this country, and as glad as I am to be home, I am also rather excited to go see some more, because I need to be reminded more often that we are better than we seem on the news.

Here We are Again

Then they are again as before all suffering

and sleep deep sleep and have no glory

and their souls are white as silk,

and from the same longing both tremble

and are frightened by their heroism.

-Ranier Maria Rilke, Martyrs

When you stretch out your hands,

I will hide my eyes from you;

even though you make many prayers,

I will not listen; 

your hands are full of blood.

-Isaiah 1: 15

It's gone deeper America.  A few years ago, you may have been able to solve this problem with laws and regulations: more thorough background checks, reasonable regulations on what kinds of guns people could own, better mental healthcare. You might still try those things, but you would be like one of those medieval doctors trying to treat cancer by bleeding the patient with leeches, it might seem like the thing to do, but it's not going to cure anything.  The rot has gotten to the bone.  We have been denying our fear and hatred for too long, even the ones who preach love, we have been too easily duped into thinking that this problem of our violent hearts could be settled with rules and scraping around on the surface.

I should have known, when someone shot up an elementary school and nothing happened that it had gotten that bad.  Our laws could use some fixing, but until we change our hearts this is just going to keep going and there will be more and more martyrs to our violence and hatred.  Let's face it, the thing that motivates people to kill crowds of strangers, whether they use bombs, guns or airplanes is the idea that those strangers are their mortal enemy.  Yes, it takes a certain derangement to make the leap from a stranger to an infidel or an invader, but derangement never seems in short supply. The desperation that afflicts many who are young, poor and disenfranchised can easily be twisted to violence with some well placed propaganda, all the better if they have been raised to believe the world owes them something better than what they have. Stir the mix with a leader or leaders who confirms and legitimizes what often seems like a natural born fear of the other, and plays to the notion that they are the true victims, and the toxic cocktail is nearly complete.

Then it's just a matter of the tools for the job, which is the place where we usually take up the debate, but that's not good enough, not now.  Now is the time for lament, to rend our hearts and not our garments.  Now is the time to admit that we don't have a solution to the real problem, but not to ignore that there is a problem and what it is.  The problem is that we are taught to believe that there is not enough to go around, not enough food, not enough shelter, not enough freedom, not enough security, not enough dignity.  There is a fundamental flaw in the human heart that never trusts that there is enough, even though all our most "enlightened" teachers from Buddha to Jesus tell us that there is, in fact, enough.

The politicians, the emperors, the tyrants and the fascists will all tell us that there is not enough and we need to fight for our share.  The mystics and the holy people (if they are truly holy) will tell us that we need to cooperate because we're all connected and this fighting over "our share" is what creates all this suffering and pours innocent blood into all of our hands.  Even those of us who would "never" consider mass violence are guilty, because we believe the fundamental lie of scarcity instead of abundance and that lie prevents us from truly loving our neighbor let alone our enemy as Christ commends.  Indeed if the ones who desire to hold power do not want us to realize that true power is in being free of the fear they use to hold us in their thrall, the best thing they could do is to keep us focused on symptoms rather than the disease.  Offer us panaceas, or convince us that nothing can really change; sell us the notion of sweeping reform, or inviting us into the slow futility of incremental and shallow changes, or tell us that nothing really can be done; the grip of the principalities and powers tightens around our throat.

So what's the solution?

First of all, refuse to be afraid, and if you are afraid practice courage.  Second of all, refuse to hate, and if you are tempted to hate practice love most powerfully in that very place.  Third of all, be kind to one another, especially when you feel justified in meanness.  Each step builds on one another. I began with a poem and a prophecy, I will end with a similar pairing:

For God's sake, be done

with this jabber of "a better world."

What blasphemy! No "futuristic"

twit or child thereof ever

in embodied light will see

a better world than this. though they

foretell inevitably a worse.

Do something! Go cut the weeds

beside the oblivious road. Pick up

the cans and bottles, old tires,

and dead predictions.  No future

can be stuffed into this presence

except by being dead. The day is

clear and bright, and overhead

the sun not yet half finished

with his daily praise.

-Wendell Berry, The Future

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;

remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes;

cease to do evil, learn what is good;

seek justice, rescue the oppressed,

defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord;

though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow;

though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land;

but if you refuse and rebel,

you shall be devoured by the sword;

for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

-Isaiah 1: 16-20

-Spoiler alert, that is the sermon text for Sunday

Divided We Stand

You are good when you are one with yourself.

Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.

For a divided house is not a den of thieves;

It is only a divided house.

And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles 

yet not sink to the bottom.

-Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

One of the most troubling aspects of our American life over the past three years has been the failure of our common identity.  Our Constitution aims towards a "more perfect union," we hold the motto: e pluribus unum,  "out of many, One."  These are noble goals, and thankfully, while they may seem to wander like that rudderless ship, they, we, have not yet sunk to the bottom.

Over the weekend, as Donald Trump went on another one of his divisive tweet fests, this time with the entire city of Baltimore and its representative Elijah Cummings, I was struck by the response of Larry Hogan, the Governor of this State of Maryland that I have called home for over six years now.  Hogan is a Republican, but he is the sort of Republican that seems to be vanishing from the national scene at the moment.  As a "Red" official in one of the "Bluest" states, Hogan has had to learn to come together with people to seek the greater good of the community.  Hogan has been critical of Trump, but not in the bombastic and overheated ways that many, including libertarians and conservatives of the pre-Trump/never Trump style, seem to favor.

Hogan, in my estimation, recognizes that Trump is a symptom of a greater problem, not the cause.  I'm not sure precisely when it happened, but somewhere in my lifetime we have lost the ability to disagree without declaring the other side evil.  Now, when one argues over issues that one considers to be matters of moral decency, like say the treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers, or the protection of unborn children (to cherry pick one cause from each side), it is tempting to label those who disagree as cruel racists or baby-killers.  However, down this path lies madness in a nation that is trying to succeed in the grand experiment of democracy.

The difference between a Larry Hogan and a Donald Trump, is not so much their policies, but their character.  In a Chief Executive at any level, I would say that character matters much more than policy (which is why I did not love Bill Clinton, even though my centrist politics jived pretty well with his).  Hogan's response to Trump's attack on Baltimore (the largest city in Hogan's state) was not to call out Trump's racist dog-whistling or even to staunchly defend Baltimore (plenty of people are doing that), but to lament the divisive spirit of our times.  I have heard him do this before, and it is usually not warmly greeted by either right or left, but it remains the right response to this age.

Let me bring it down a level, and speak of what I know better than state or federal politics, let me talk about church politics, because as the pastor of a church I know what it is like to lead a group of people who do not always agree.  I am also familiar with the dynamic that emerges when moral ideas come up for debate.  The reason why church arguments become infamously toxic is because they happen within a community that is supposed to be a united body.  To say that the United States was founded on Christian principles may not be entirely correct, but they did lift perhaps the most crucial principle of unity from the writings of the New Testament, particularly the pleas and entreaties of the Apostle Paul to the church to be of one mind, the mind that was in Christ Jesus. Even as Paul practically begged people to love each other as brothers and sisters, he also had to continually correct them and teach them that being different was not the problem, not loving each other was the problem.

So, even now, in the church, which has been learning these hard lessons for two thousand years instead of just over two hundred, we can still get wrapped up in partisan debates and start labeling those with whom we are supposed to be One Body, as enemies, heretics and apostates.

You could make a solid argument that, in fact, the church is in decline due to this failing.  Indeed, it may be on the way to dying.  But as Chesterton said, in The Everlasting Man, the church has died several times over the course of her history, but we serve a God who has managed to find his way out of the grave.  The dangerous thing for a nation/empire, is that God finds them exceedingly disposable.  The Church stands rooted in history and, despite my fears, I have faith that she will continue to stand, even if her form changes radically.  Our baby nation however, I am not so sanguine.

Over the past decades we have lost our rudder. We may be worse off than simply a house divided, we very well may have become a den of thieves.  Donald Trump is definitely a thief, he is a con man and a swindler at that, perhaps a worse sort of thief than even a common thug, because he brings into doubt the judgment of those whom he defrauds.  He has deliberately presented a "platform," if you can even call it that, which is entirely founded upon fear and division.  He clearly delineates the world into "good" people who support him and "love Trump," and evil people, who are "very unfair," any time they criticize him or even call him on what George Will colorfully named a "vesuvius of mendacity."

In my world, I have experienced the travails of trying to seek a middle way, to find a compromise on issues where there is stark disagreement.  You usually don't make anyone happy, and then you end up getting shot at from both flanks. I believe that we need leaders like Barack Obama and Larry Hogan (they can come from both sides), who recognize our commonweal is more important than winning whatever skirmish is happening at the moment.

The alternative is to move farther apart.  In a church argument, often times the pastor becomes a casualty of one wing or another, and usually that wing bullies their way to a position of power, then they pick the next pastor, who is more "like-minded."  In the process, the "losing" wing feels disenfranchised and often leaves or fades away.  This is not good for the whole body, because part of it is now missing, even if you win, you lose.

That is where we are as a nation, Trump has sold himself (fraudulently in my opinion) as a winner.  He perpetually panders to his base and has pretty much rejected any strategy of reaching out to his detractors.  His approval ratings hover in the low 40's which is where they were during the 2016 election and where they have steadfastly remained.  His sales pitch is still working on many of the people he duped, I mean convinced, in 2016. His success has precipitated a crop of Democrats who use his same tactics: get hit, hit back harder; they yell, you yell louder; they tweet, you tweet more.  While I am having a hard time getting on the Biden bandwagon, I now see the danger in my darling Bernie.  What I am hoping for in 2020 from the blue side is a return to normalcy.  I would like someone of character that is willing to stand on the middle ground, because I believe (maybe it's a vain hope) that the middle ground still exists.

So far, I do not see an Obama among the Dems, and I doubt Hogan is going to run a Quixotic primary campaign against the Donald, but we are still a long way from election day 2020.  In some ways I want it to get here faster, in others I am hoping that the arc of history has time to bend back towards e pluribus unum, before then.  This rudderless ship has been lucky so far, but I don't trust our luck that much longer.