We Shall Overcome

 We are in an unimaginable crisis as a nation. Yet we have enormous strength. We were gifted with confidence that our democracy and constitution can rise to overcome the worst oppressions humans can suffer from each other. Now we have a complex conversion of crises. Martin Luther King’s birthday is a time to remember that the crises he said we shall overcome “someday” are not yet overcome. We need his vision for insight since the enemy, in different form, is back again.

 

It’s the biggest lie then and now, that some of us are less worthy than others, permanently unqualified for full protection of our constitution, for the best jobs, for leadership in our nation, or to simply live. The obvious lie of our mentally questionable president has been powerful to open a path ahead. Yes he did not lose because the election was rigged against him. He lost because the people voted him out. We can be thankful it wasn’t close. We as a people have chosen against the lie about the results of our election.  

 

But there is this other lie. The famous Big Lie Hitler sold successfully to Germany was that Jews are enemies of all citizens of the “fatherland.” But more important, They were called bad people, and eventually far worse. Of course, the big lie had an unquestioned small truth: many Jewish families owned shares in German banks. And among them, as in all segments of human societies, criminality sometimes occurred. Unacknowledged was the truth that this criminality occurred, if anything, more often in the rest of German society. But the big lie led to rampage, rioting, “kristallnacht,” and genocide. The big lie remains, that humans are not endowed by the Creator with equal rights. But they are. It’s in our constitution. That’s truth.

 

We don't want our nation repeating the history of Germany’s holocaust against the Jews. Our democratic values are stronger. We will destroy an insurgency with patience and strength of truth.  It depends on our capacity, now that the vote is clear, to keep valuing and nurturing any small voice, rational and legitimate, raised in protest to be heard and respected. The small true voice was hard to hear in the loud mob violence of that event. But Consortium News reports it January 16.

 

The demonstrators did plan the portrayal of a possible insurrection, but, Chris Hedges says. Their plans may really not have intended murder, kidnapping, or hostage-taking. The message clearly  overstated was, “it can happen.” He quotes a demonstrator, “We gotta change it. They f…g abuse us. They laugh at us. They steal our money.” Last Thursday Hedges wrote further, “one can decry their politics, the racism among many, and their tactics, but their pain is real in a system that has shrunk the middle class and debased workers across the nation. What happened at the Capitol cannot be condoned. But unless Congress defies its oligarchic backers and serves the interests of (all) average Americans, who also fund them, a real insurrection may be inevitable.  Instead of the reforms to defuse that and bring more economic justice, we are witnessing a crackdown that will only further inflame the country.”

 

There is no equivalency in the lies and the loss of voice, deadly violence, and generations of abuse between the January 6 White demonstrators and the Black Lives Matter demonstrators. But there is one common ground. Both sides are still set to lose, like they did as our president watched, hidden in cowardice, as the violence unfolded. An item not reported is the strength of American values stopping the carnage when a leader demanded “leave her chair alone, don’t mess up the papers” after forced entry into one of the congressional offices.  The presence, regardless of how small, of respect for our constitution and our elected leadership can defuse our president-inspired polarity. The biggest lie is that  some of us, any group of us, are more expendable, low life, too old, too young, wrong gender, wrong color, too poor, too addicted, too redneck, or not worth hearing or caring about. Unraveling that lie is our common need. And it oppresses both sides of the polarized divide.

 

The nation’s most visible enemy affecting us in Montana is not the visible lie about the election itself. It’s not congressmen like Cruz and Hawley who still promote believing the lie. In my home county, the battle against our Big Lie is carried by our Montana Missing & Murdered Indigenous People (see it on Facebook). It’s a more hidden form hiding in our good families across Montana, and in my very own family too.. It expresses itself in our souls, touched by singer Bob Marley’s words, as “mental slavery.” It defied and eliminated the fairness doctrine that used to guarantee dialogue and debate with civility on our media, voted out 20 years ago. And we can and will recover, as we define and excise our mental slavery, regardless of victimhood or perpetrator roles.

 

Black Lives Matter, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, are ahead of most of us past those lies. The “Proud Boys” and “Q-Anon” have members who can agree on this truth, seen by millions when George Floyd was killed. We need both sides helping unravel it all. It’s mental slavery at the root of job loss, unlivable wages, the pandemic, broken families, addictions and incarceration. These issues can now unite against our departing government gone awry with intentions to inflame and ignite our polarity into violence. We can build a new direction with careful Republican pursuit of the many ways Democrats can also misuse the power entrusted them by our votes. Republicans who continue the president’s false conspiracy theories should now start losing.

 

Let’s trust God and his way, the words and life of Dr. Martin Luther King, and the record of nations in our Bible. It culminates in the stories of Jesus. Let’s read it and follow it. That’s the best way forward for anyone claiming “Jesus Saves.” For us all, pray for courage to allow our religious traditions to cleanse us from any elements of mental slavery.

 

We in Montana can find God’s way for our nation together. We shall overcome.

Good news

 

Good News

 

There’s a way through the darkness of our pandemics. It’s in the values of liberty, freedom and justice for all in our nation’s foundation. That’s where we’ll find restoration of respect for all our rights to exist. That’s the rights all of us feel endangered, across our polarized boundaries.

 

We can secure them together. It depends on seeing our common enemy hidden in the middle of our families’ fascination with social media. It’s the commandeering of our attention capacity for outrage for profit, without regard for the destruction of our liberties, our values of democracy, and the strength of our family life in America.

 

This fascination for outrage fired up the crowd that terminated in a violent mob our Capitol this January 6.  It has also drugged our children via handheld screens into a secure bubble of common outrage against all sorts of real and imagined ills in our society. Hooked for long periods of time, even our children turn into products of public attention for advertising, to be sold for profit. It’s the big reason most digital technology experts in Silicon Valley keep digital screens away from their children well into high school age.

 

This is the other, more real and dangerous conspiracy behind the January 6 breaking and entering our nation’s capital. Google and Facebook, yes, did likely aid and abet the election rigging story behind the outrage the mob shouted in breaking and entering our capital. Even worse was the money to be gained in children’s and adults’ minds around the country with face time with a trusted avatar of outrage, face time that easily turned into advertising time. The psychological research into keeping a child or adult in that bubble, away from normal family engagements, was and remains profitable.   

 

Most remarkably, the outraged disinformation flood is lessening. Two years ago executives of Google, Facebook, Twitter and other digital platforms gathered together with Netflix leaders to create documentary, The Social Dilemma. It’s been on Netflix since a year ago. It predicts our insurrection January 6, and sheds valuable light on how our business economy grew Google and Facebook upon untruth, up to six times more profitable than truth.  

 

As it stands now, Google search words “global warming,” for example, brings up glaciers melting and seas rising in one user’s phone, proving global warming is real. On another they bring up evidence of a total natural set of phenomena, proving global warming is a hoax.  Each individual user’s secretly stored record of clicks and attention time determines the results of a search. It also determines content of notifications, pop-up ads, and even email message ads. 

 

The Social Dilemma documentary has evidence of the cost of  in teen addictions, mental illness, suicide, loneliness, and extremism is rooted in the addictive nature of our social media and artificial intelligency. It’s manipulated by a neglected crack in our worldwide social media platforms led by Facebook and Google.  On that day, that crack turned into a cavernous crevasse dropping into a torrent of fabricated outrage that the election was rigged. The same torrent directly undermines our families and damages the minds and growth of our children. It works against  progress being made in Missing and Murdered Ingenous Women, in Black Lives Matter, and in reversing the job loss in the energy crisis in Montana and here in Big Horn County.

 

Since our nation’s foundation we have come a ways toward respect for all.  Is it possible we could thank the marchers of January 6 for unwittingly opening the light of truth with their outrage leading to five citizen deaths? What do we see now, that such obsession with outrage, driven without real trusted human relationships, can go to terrible places for our children and our nation? And that it comes not from some mysterious avatar or matrix, but from the reality of social media platforms and artificial intelligence designed for profit over truth? It’s possible we can learn from the marchers and their victims that day.

 

Outrage that the election was fraudulent fueled the violence, because media messages ignored truth. The outrage itself is now proven fraudulent. Thankfully, it could not forge a way through the defenses our nation has built to protect our government of the people, by the people, for the people. But the corporate interest in citizen outrage to build profit remains entrenched and codified into our digital world of artificial intelligence and social media platforms. And outrage peddling for profit remains almost totally unregulated, even peddled by secret invasion through social media into our children’s minds. It will continue lying.

 

Sophocles, as quoted in The Social Dilemma, said thousands of years ago, “nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.”  We here in rural southern Montana have the courage, tenacity, and intelligence to act to avert the curse of our vast digital empire, reclaim it under human control, and restructure it like we have placed organ donor icons on our licenses to legally prevent profit from our deaths. It’s time to stop the profiteering from the likes of that attack on our Capitol, our democracy, and our children all originating from our dysregulated digital social media.

Child discipline the original nations' way

Child discipline the original nations’ way in Montana. July 1975. 

A thunderstorm was brooding over the Wolf Mountains off to the southwest that July evening of 1975. It was my first summer after a year of teaching children of the Testsestahse, the Cheyenne nation in Montana at Busby School. I had arrived at a field south of Lame Deer where lots of cars were parked around an open arbor with a pole in the center.

Ke’éehe (grandmother) of one of my students had invited me to a sun dance. I agreed to go with heavy questions on my mind. There were crises I barely weathered through my first year teaching in this formerly Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) boarding school. So many children in my elementary, middle school and even high school classes were undisciplined, wild, and uncontrollable through that year. I could not see a way through the new requirement that we teachers stop using consequences, not post rules, stop marching drills, and no longer make students recite “I will…”  to motivate them to learn or behave. This was the new policy of the new local school board. To my consternation, the administration supported it. The parents had cited years of abuse and mistreatment by BIA teachers and was determined to find a better direction grounded in their own way of child upbringing and discipline.

This was before the UN charter on the “rights of indigenous peoples.” But many of the Cheyenne nation, led by my friend Ted Risingsun, were tired of sovereignty loss over child upbringing, and successfully voted in a local school board. BIA teachers and administrators left. The loss of BIA oversight meant the loss of discipline for learning, as I and many colleagues saw it. I had no experience then of indigenous discipline training, nor could perceive any problem with the European caste expressions in Montana connected with race and color, blinding me then to see a better way to learn discipline.

One expression was that Cheyenne children were raised with latent immaturity.  I mistakenly agreed they just lacked parenting skills. Sometimes I heard words deprecating Cheyenne culture as the reason. Evidence I saw was that parents did not train children to obey. Even worse, as I saw it, children came to school with a nonchalant disability to obey a teacher's authority, learned at home. They grew up rebelling against many of the dominant culture’s ways. This was the cause, in my frame of mind, of the abominable rate of incarceration and alcoholism. It did set up frequent conflicts in my classroom, especially in middle school grades.

It took decades for me to see how wrong I was. And it remains a frontier of opportunity for re-inventing schooling among American first people’s families. Montana still lags in this awareness.

The sun dance “Ke’éehe” (grandmother) was seated on a folding chair in the light of the fire, near the dance arbor, as I approached.  She was already speaking slowly in Cheyenne. Her voice had a clarity and strength that amazed me, easily unencumbered by occasional low rumblings of thunder over the southwest hills.  I had no idea she had this voice. There were no microphones. There were many more children and adults together than I could image being quiet and actually listening, knowing the lack of discipline to listen demonstrated in school. Smaller children were seated in the grass, with elders on lawn chairs right behind them, and much of the crowd was gathered standing quietly behind this circle. How could young children remain quiet through these increasing flashes of lightening and louder thunder? Could I learn and practice some of this discipline in my classes and summer’s end?

My discomfort rose with the storm bearing down. Subconsciously I took a cue from the quiet confidence in the entire gathering that everyone and everything remained OK. There was already in my heart a sense of spiritual confidence at this time and place impinging on our reality there.
Mostly it was the discipline of the children to stay put, quiet, and attentive in apparent danger I sensed from the coming storm. Transfixed, I couldn’t move.

During that half hour or more she continued speaking, she did not raise her voice above the thunder.  Toward the end, with louder thunder claps she just stopped, patiently waiting until it was quiet again. Her rising and falling slow, careful speech in Cheyenne language drifted up and over into the darkening of the cloud and the descent of the sun. As a gentle breeze began moving, the dim outline of the arbor and pole brightened in pink light.  I turned around to look opposite the storm. The setting sun was lighting a spot of rising clouds ablaze in the sky above the east ridge. Those clouds built, and the first lightning and thunder began on the other side of our gathering. The light dimmed and went out. Thunder intensified. A few drops disturbed the dust under my feet, and immediately stopped. The storm regrouped and moved off farther east. Only then she announced "hinne ha'ena"  (that's it; completed). Immediately her learning circle dissipated and the dancers and drummers began the after-sunset ceremonies. The afterglow from the sunset broke through the remaining clouds in the west, and lit my path to my car. 

 

In Crow Agency School Public School 2004, many years later, I fell in love with teaching music with kids K through 5. It happened because I invited Evelyn Old Elk, and later her daughter Dora and friend Joy Brien, to come into my music classroom. Along with Ted Risingsun many years before, they taught what remains largely missing to this day in teacher education and inservice classes: the heritage way of child discipline among the Apsáalooke and Cheyenne. I was very slow to learn their respect for children’s learning, and how to invite their respect. 

 

Some parents and providers are joining in an online class, meeting once a week and with mentors through the week, with Lifeways North America. This is beginning March 3 to April 3 this spring. Most of the cost will be covered by a scholarship for people who are caring for or teaching Native American children in our area of Southern Montana. Look up Lifeways North America, and contact 406 665-5714 or graberdb@gmail.com


David Graber, January 15, 2021

"...one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

 

Every school morning beginning in the late 40’s until my retirement, I spoke these words in class. They still ring true to our vision as a nation, despite increasing division over the past few years. With the violent attack on our representative democracy by our own citizens on January 6, 2021, we need our leaders to ring them out again with us. But that’s not all we need from our elected leaders in Montana.

 

I heard the dirty yellow Plymouth drive up and honk. I walked over from my Bible school class with kids we hauled from North Gulfport to our church grounds. I still remember the driver’s angry gaze breaking through the early morning heat that Mississippi summer of 1965. He mumbled curses about human beings of color I prefer not to remember. I remember the words “pedophile ring” and “miscegenation going on here with our n…s.”  I told him “You must have driven in here by mistake.  I have no idea what you are talking about.”    “But you got N---s here!” I heard the shout as he drove off, spraying my legs with gravel.  Later we had another a bomb scare, also not unexpected, but still stressful in the political tension of the 60’s. I do remember thinking how powerful lies are when even a few people proliferate the outrage lies can generate.

 

But now, under the spell of digital media gone wild, we have a virtual flood of lies generating outrage between political enemies, inspired by enemy nations, motivating a rising militancy against our principles of law and order built on truth and our court system. We are losing and demeaning a judicial system among the best in the world. It’s vital importance is because in our nation, truth is not to be decided by a mob, by social media, or in the court of public opinion. Lies are to be confronted, and liars prosecuted to find truth. Without this tyranny looms.

 

Truth—legally speaking for our nation—is determined in a court of law. An allegation is brought forward. It must be supported by solid evidence, meeting legal requirements of validity. A judge examines the allegation and the evidence. If there is legally valid evidence to support an allegation, then the allegation is tried in a court of law. This is to guarantee any lawsuit allowed into court has legally certified evidence enough to follow through with the judicial process to determine truth.

 

Knowing that justice in the hands of humans inevitably will be imperfect sometime, our founding fathers created a process of appeals. This is because we all know that power corrupts, and we must always strive to protect citizens from an abusive government acting under the corruption of power.  When our President lost the election, he had every right to file lawsuits in state courts wherever his attorneys sensed rigging, errors, or outright fraud.  They did so, in 62 courts. None of the lawsuits, even in those states where Trump’s popularity was high, found adequate evidence to justify court action. The lawsuits were refused because factual evidence was missing. The president cannot legally overturn his loss in the election.

Joseph Goebbels, Nazi advisor to Hitler, is quoted as saying, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

 

Christians believe in a truth that stands outside of personal preference. That’s why our pledge includes the word “under God.” Satan, leader of the opposing spiritual realm, is the father of lies. Majority beliefs do not get us there. The false prophets of Israel outnumbered God’s prophet Elijah 450 to one, but Elijah was proven true in 1 Kings 18. To be under God means to seek truth, even when it’s costly

 

On January 6, thousands of protestors gathered in Washington D.C., fueled by a narrative that our national elections were rigged against the president. The lie was compounded by conspiracy theories fed on digital media. They invented lies of malicious dark powers, steeped in evils like pedophilia. They still are claiming this is at the helm of our Democratic party, falsely attacking real patriots for turning our nation into a socialist communist tyranny. Our powerful digital media, unhampered by normal human conversation, generated their toxic soundbites picked to be transmitted by Christian pastors, online preachers, pundits and TV commentators.  It has paved an unconceivable way in our nation to reject what “The People have spoken” last November. It has generated millions of dollars in profit from contributions to the Republican party, and to President Trump personally. And it defies and discredits the states’ power to elect our president, and to conduct a reasonable investigation when evidence of fraud warrants it.

 

Moments after the President declared falsely a landslide victory had been stolen, and told the crowd they can do something about it, they marched towards the Capitol. As citizens watched in horror, a group of extremists rose to the crest of the wave and broke violently into the center of our representative democracy, our capitol building, leaving death and destruction, the fruit of lies.

 

Defying the independent judiciary of the courts at our state capitols attacks the core of our democracy.  It’s astounding that most of our top elected Montana politicians continue such defiance. Senator Daines was asked about the President’s outrageous words encouraging the crowd on the way to the Capitol. He diverted to claim the upcoming 2^nd impeachment is the real source of outrage, and should be stopped. That bothers me, because truth is hidden and a lie remains in power.

 

What bothered me in Mississippi a half century ago bothers me now. Our Republican government officials refuse to acknowledge the current lie about our election. It’s the same refusal that allowed many in our congress to deny the constitutional authority of the states to affirm the election. The character assassination of our Bible School staff was totally false, and had a political agenda to say Black lives do not matter in our nation. Truth is truth. Our president’s 62 lawsuits examined in state courts settled it over and over.  Our American system of government of the people, by the people, and for the people is proven solid again. We the people can govern. But we need our Montana leaders to apply what patriotism they have, and uphold our American values of arriving at truth for this election. Our "Pledge of Allegiance" requires it.

Looking back to go forward

Controlling our Outrage

Again.   

Revised December 14, 2020

Not long ago we had in place more controls over the passionate emotion of outrage. We can return to these controls to resolve our polarity now.

The Creator blessed us humans with the shared emotion of outrage. Throughout our past, we used it to collectively to unite around real threats to ourselves and others of our kind. The emotion blessed us. Misused, it has cursed us. Jesus himself encountered it from before his birth, and charted his way, recorded in the Gospels of the Bible, to defeat threats of uncontrolled outrage and thrive together. It’s an easily missed part of the first Christmas story.

 

We are again in a time of uncontrolled outrage. We have been watching trusted people collecting power to eliminate others of our own kind. These are no longer dangers of a rogue bear or tiger bent on human flesh. It’s time to direct our attention against uncontrolled outrage against our own flesh and blood (see NPR’s podcast “The Hidden Brain,” from last week).

 

Following is a story from an acquaintance of mine. I first heard him tell this story decades ago. Last week I requested and he sent me his own words of this story.*

 

When I was a young boy, my grandfather, father, and I travelled some distance from our home community to go fishing at a spot ‘known only to my grandfather.’ Having driven as far as roads would take us, we got out of my grandfather’s old beater, and gathering our gear, set out on the trail toward this favourite fishing spot. We soon found ourselves in the middle of a deep, dark woods making our way along a narrow trail where, with each passing step, the way ahead and behind became less and less perceptible. On more than a few occasions I expressed my concern to my grandfather; each time he sought to reassure me.

 

Finally, unable to hold in my anxiety, fearful about what lay ahead of us, even more anxious that the way back would never again be found, I tugged frantically on my Grandfather’s arm. “Grandfather, Grandfather,” I cried out, “We’ll be lost! We’ll be lost!” Sensing the rising fear in me, my Grandfather knelt down, and after reassuring me more fully, taught me a lesson, one that has guided my thinking and actions from that day to this. In the mixture of languages that was his habit of speech, he told me that each new trail we take could seem like it leads along an uncertain path; the way back can seem unclear, obscured by the landscape. “But,” he said, “When you set out on a new trail, if you spend twice as much of your time looking over your shoulder at where you have come from as you do where you are going; if you fix the landmarks behind you in your mind the way they will appear to you when you turn to take the trail back, you will never become lost – you will always be able to find your way home.” 

 

That day my grandfather gave me the ability to find my way to and from all of the various destinations in life that would lie before me; all of which, as I set out on each new trail, were initially unknown. Contemporary societies – not just North American – are no longer used to looking at where they have come from. They are far more fixated on an as yet unknown and unknowable future – on what comes next. Rather than use the past to help determine where they are on the trail of life in relation to where they started, they plunge ahead, frequently blindly, expecting that the future will correct any mistakes they make in navigation.

 

How can we recover the good use of outrage, as felt by this child? Might this be a late night topic this holiday season? Join the conversation on my blog:

Greenwoodback40@blogspot.com

 

 

* Terry LeBlanc, a Mi’kmaq-Acadian, is founder and Director of NAIITS, An Indigenous Learning Community as well as adjunct professor at several Canadian and American seminaries. He holds a PhD in Theology and Anthropology from Asbury seminary. Terry has worked in a variety of roles equipping Indigenous people for leadership in their homes, communities and places of faith. Working with Elijah Harper at the Sacred Assembly in ’95 Terry co-authored the event’s “Reconciliation and Principles” documents. He is an award-winning author, speaker and professor, teaching about Indigenous peoples, cultures in context, anthropology, missions, and the church.  

 

Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016 1

 

 

The following additional paragraphs have possible discussion points:

 

1.     We are peaking a centuries long trajectory of tyrants increasingly gaining power over other people. They have been building outrage against other human beings to the point of extermination. It’s a dangerous emotion even for a child as portrayed here. It was undermining his confidence in the most trusted adults in his life. The emotion blocked his normal ability to see evidence his father and grandfather were trustworthy. 

 

2.     Why didn’t they present his confused distrust with the facts? They knew he couldn’t see it by being corrected. That’s where we are now as a nation, with a sizable portion of our population unable to see evidence, unable to receive correction. And a sizeable portion of us believe this outrage-generated falsehood: “All we need to do is force the truth as a weapon against those who refuse to believe it, and our power over them will get them to believe truth again.” 

 

3.     Fortunately, we Americans have the world’s best judicial system­—the father and grandfather in the story—with a possible process to arrive at evidence-based truth. It allows acting on the truth more than trying to attack the lies. But it is a new for us, old for indigenous culture, way forward. 

 

4.     What steps can help us navigate away from the no-evidence outrage endangering our nation from both sides of our polarity? 

 

5.     What can help us past the outrage fanned by President Trump’s continued aggression against even victims in his own party? 

 

6.     How can we support the discredited professional Republicans who have found the courage to stay on the evidence track for the good of all of us? Are these not our real heroes: our police, teachers, healthcare providers, election workers and attorneys who help us access responsible, caring ways to grasp us lovingly, turn us around, and point us to truth that frees us from consequences of unregulated outrage? 

 

7.     How can we answer words of outrage with love, like Jesus did, and ignore the evidence-missing outrage still emanating from too much of our political, news, religious, and entertainment media.

 

 

A Thanksgiving Parallel

 

Wampanoag still fighting for their land and water 

written November 25, 2020

Disinformation and outright lies flooding our media have darkened our vision. Getting past Thanksgiving invites us through our fears directly into this darkness. We best can’t go around it, we gotta go through it. Just maybe, more of these leaders with courage can help us throught the darkness false fears many of us have taken for granted. It’s possible the branding of religious, racial, gender, economics, birthplace and ethnicity groups of real people as enemy can now be removed. The Bible can show us truth through these falsehoods by “whatever is true, whatever is honorable..” (read on, Philippians 4_8). Now is a good time, after Thanksgiving, for truth to take us through the darkness of our lies about pandemics and politics, guided by the light Jesus gave us.

 

The Wampanoag nation’s elders and the documents of that history offer us  a historical example of this truth. This is the nation who first hosted the pilgrims (look up Patriot Pledge 2020/11/25/ National Day Mourning). After they disembarked bad things happened. There was a brief sharing of food and celebration. It will not be obscured for us by finding the evidence in the darkness. It’s true a small nation of some 40,000 citizens mostly perished from a combination of a pandemic and bloodshed from gunfire. But there were hundreds of survivors, unlike the report in some of our children’s history books that this nation went extinct (See Time Magazine “Wampanoag First Thanksgiving”).

 

Historical revisionism was almost inevitable as settlers arrived on our shores. Yes they were fleeing slavery and mass extermination. There were real reasons for fleeing to the New World. President Roosevelt did want to honor and update this national holiday in 1941, celebrating the welcome by those who hosted the Pilgrims as honored guests. But the tragic truth of what happened, the words actually spoken and written down as well as documents from the time, are now supported more by teachers in our schools and elders in our families. These good people know a right time to give children access to this real evidence, when they are ready. And the process is healing.  

 

The 400-year-old story is long, and difficult. The present story of our pandemic and increasing violence could now repeat the original Thanksgiving history of pandemic and war. We can grow in strength nationally from the pain of the truth of the first Thanksgiving. Will there be a similar truth behind our nation’s covid19, and its continuation into the next months or years? The greatest benefit would come as we discipline ourselves to the pain of truth-telling and hearing, and change our behavior accordingly as we are able.

 

The Wampanoag people believed a logical lie. The sound of gunfire had to be the cause of their deaths. The closer they were, the more immediate and bloody their death.  With no projectile visible, people died when close, and much later when far. No wonder it took generations.

 

Their pandemic spread, along with the gunfire, and 80% and more of the nation’s towns and villages had been wiped out already by the first Thanksgiving (see Wikipedia, or the Times article on Day of Mourning Thanksgiving) It appeared to many that the whole nation perished as the Indian wars, guns against spears and arrows, raged on. But hundreds had fled, and survived to keep their nation alive. These are the remnant tragically threatened again by our pandemic and by land seizure by our politicians.

 

After 400 years the Wampanoag are still fighting for their land and lives. In late March, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced proposed termination of 321 acres of tribal land in Mashpee and Taunton, Mass., to lose reservation status because the tribe supposedly didn’t meet the definition of Indian. In June, a federal judge described this decision “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and contrary to law,” and the matter is not resolved. The tribe awaits Interior’s new decision, and is hoping for permanent protection through an act of Congress.

 

A parallel history of hidden truth is becoming accessible to our Montana students and their teachers, and to the Wampanoag in Massachusetts.  This is now:

1)    Covid19 is in fact extremely dangerous.  We can learn from our epidemics in the past if we stop the blaming and get to work.

2)    Wear a mask. The fabric of even the best filters cannot prevent virus transmission when we must mix with those outside our family circle. But a mask properly worn, with proper ambient ventilation, drastically reduces the catching of each other’s breath! It’s in the air we share.

3)    Base our kids’ learning upon our families, not on our factory culture curriculum. Our schooling loss and our covid transmission can be stopped simultaneously. But it takes a huge change to recover trust for our 5,000 year-old outcomes-based learning unit: the family pod, its circle of security, the learning circle it encloses, with cross-generation engagement in real life needs. See The  Atlantic article, “School Wasn’t So Great Before Covid,” November 2020.

4)    And prayer changes things. There’s real evidence. Mostly God changes our own hearts. Let’s welcome some change, it’s part of living life.  Christmas is coming.

 

 

Parting our Covid Cloud

 

Written November 18, 2020

Our human need is relationship. All of us agree on this

 

But do we agree it's key to our covid cloud needing parting?  Covid clouds our capacity to know and respond successfully to each other. It’s a job to build the courage to care and respond around the constrictions, mandates, and yes, legitimate fears.

 

What can we do when we must have a mask? We still have our eyes. They talk too. And we still have our voice. Many young children not easily heard need help realizing they can actually be heard through a mask. Our eyes, our hands and our voice can reach past a mask. Physical distancing makes it harder to hear and touch, but when the attempt is seen it counts too.  Most of us don’t like stopping our voices in fear our larynx might slew out a virus cloud against a loved one.  Most of us can be asymptomatic super-spreaders like this. It all assumes physical presence.

 

Enter the digital age. Can this be a gift to part our covid cloud? We need to thank our caregivers who often focus on our shared technology to connect with loved ones in case of exposure or a positive test. It is not a diversion from health care. It’s at the heart of our loved ones’ capacity to survive an infection.

 

All of us can prepare for the possibility of isolation. We can be sure phone numbers are updated and working. We can practice active face video so we know how to see and respond with faces unmasked.  We can ask hospital caregivers to help our family elders make our digital connections work–and thank God we have this option.  

 

What’s not widely known is that loss of human responsive relationships almost certainly will damage human health, mentally and physically, and interfere with recovery. Medical schools now train integrating physical medicine with the spiritual and relational, a practice deeply centered in the heritages of indigenous people here in Montana. All of us have a generations-old heritage of valuing mutually responsive relationship with children. We now have an urgent need to understand how.

 

The Adverse Childhood Experiences study helps.  In 2014, retired, I responded to an ad to attend a conference in Billings with Center for Disease Control epidemiologist Dr. Rob Anda. I signed up and took two additional training sessions with his training group in Montana the next two years, and was certified a master trainer. This is where I learned the often ignored importance of responsive relationship in children’s development.  I thought it was enought to get children's responses to me. I had no idea this needs balance with response to them. Now I know this extends to elders as well, and to all family members. And after this past week of funerals, visits, and phone calls with best friends and family members ill with covid, I thought of this training. It changed my mind, and charts a way forward with covid.

 

I always knew the fun of mutually responsive interaction.  I enjoyed my kids; building and crashing block towers, peekaboo, playing catch, learning to dance or drum with our adopted family–when I had time. Now I know that learning and doing things back an forth, exchanging giving and recieving responses, is really fun work. In younger children it is essential to develop the executive function of the human mind.  Skills needed to do things, skills being with family to cooperate, care and share, all help children grow strong, and builds capacity their capacity to heal and grow through life.

 

But most important is the science-based fact that we need mutually responsive physical interaction through life. We all were born in an experience of trauma. We reached for and found human response beginning with our mother. Now when older, more vulnerable to covid, when connections like these are clouded, we need the same deliverance we found at our birth. Again we all need games, even the World Series, and being face-to-face in real time even if it must be digital screens.  It’s not “just for fun.” It’s where the Divine is present in the human realm. It’s why our religious practices are so important. We know God responds to us, and we know it best when humans do too.  In joining in religious practices together, even online, we are parting the confusion of the covid cloud.  God gifts us to see and cherish our human relationships as He did in the story of Jesus. Let’s join more in parting the covid cloud here.

 

Fanning the Tiny Flame of Truth

 

 

–Against incendiary disinformation, conspiracy theories, and character assassination.

 

The most dangerous of the growing American disinformation business tells us not to trust our elections. We could be on the road to losing our democracy, and moving into repeating the chaos and destruction of the race riots of the 60’s.

 

I was there then, immersed in our civil rights revolution voter rights drives in the south. I was too young a college student to grasp the impact of the death and destruction I saw then.

 

I met pastors in tears sorting through the ashes of burned church buildings, in Black and Choctaw communities. I saw the gaping hole in a pond dam along a lonely piney woods road between Philadelphia and Meridian, Mississippi. That’s where three bodies were excavated a week earlier, when I passed by in 1965.

 

Shortly before that, I was with a young man at his college dorm over spring break, the first black student allowed at Mississippi State University. He was still grieved with the loss of his brother, one of three demonstrators tortured, murdered and buried by a bulldozer in that dam.

 

One early December morning before then, in Canton, Mississippi, I parked my ’51 Studebaker convertible in front of the only open eatery I could find after driving all night. I ordered my egg sandwich at the bar and was going to eat it there. The only other patrons were three middle age men at a table in the Northeast corner.

 

I didn’t know why they glared at me.  Much later I realized they likely saw my Iowa plates.  “What the h--- are you doing here, Yankee boy?” The fat grey-haired one got my attention.  

 

“I’m hungry, looks like the only place open.” 

 

“Where do you think you goin?” 

 

“Visit my girlfriend’s family for Christmas, at Gulfport.”

 

“We don’t want Yankee n____ lovers helping Martin Lucifer Coon stir up our n____s  here. You wouldn’t happen to know him?”  

 

“No, I never heard the name.”

 

“Some folks call him ‘Dr. Martin Luther King.”

 

“O yeah, he does demonstrations, right?” I answered, and then he responded with a volley of anti-Communist  and anti-demonstrator rants unwritable. 

 

I grunted a thanks for the education, wrapped my sandwich in a paper napkin, paid my bill, grabbed my coffee in a paper cup to go, and headed for the door. Their last words were scant comfort, 

 

“You’ll be OK if you don’t git mixed up with our n___’s, …and stay away from that ‘coon fella! Have a good trip.”

 

I tried not to run to my car, closed the door and headed out, With one hand on the wheel and the other with my sandwich and coffee, I kept looking for that white rusty pickup I parked beside, the only vehicle there when I arrived. My coffee spilled. Gradually, I quit looking in my rear view mirror and finished my egg sandwich, and tried to think clearly.

 

Hours later, arriving in Gulfport, I was fortunate to have time for reflection with my family-to-be there.

 

I still remember pondering this with them, after my first serious white supremacy encounter. They had decades of experience with this. How could human beings come to believe any group of human beings is any less than fully human, any less worthy of respect by others? 

 

Start toward the answer: they didn’t choose that belief. It comes from kings, and the way kings get their subjects' loyalty, and willingness to shed blood to defend their king.

 

Our nation’s founders did not want a king. They choose the ballot over the bullet, a spiritual war over a war of flesh and blood. The result has been elections for a president, and more recently a presidential term limit. We now have safeguards to make sure our president does not aspire to kingly power. Until recently, the whole world looked up to our election system with its protections against abuse and fraud. Here’s some facts:

 

1.     Most nations of the world have shown their respect for our tradition by quickly endorsing Biden’s election.

2.     Our current lame-duck president, using language I heard from white supremacists in the 60’s opposing black voter rights, repeated offensive language with claims our election for Joe Biden was “rigged, fake and wrong.”

3.     Last week our free press, another long-time credible institution of our nation, reported that 60% of all Republicans believe our lame-duck president: the election was falsely won by Joe Biden, and should be overturned.

4.     Even the mismatched signature controversy in black majority counties in Georgia, leading to talk of throwing out an entire black-majority county's ballots–voter suppression itself, can come nowhere near overturning the strong results currently electing Joe Biden as our president.

 

We need a caution: Our lame-duck president is not alone a major threat to our democracy and strength as a nation. Nor are our many friends who in fear of law and order breakdown are arming themselves to protect their families. The most danger comes from leaders who have gained enormous trust of one side, and hatred of the other. We are in danger because almost none of our national leaders are respected by both sides.  It’s almost impossible to find them on TV or internet. 

 

But they are with us, yes! They are here in our own towns and countryside. These are the ones who, with skillful listening to both sides, use respectful language to probe into a better understanding of the root of our prevailing fears.  Our popular pundits, politicians, and preachers on the media do not hear them. They have the power here in our towns and countryside because they have respect across our crazy polarity. We need their words now, to help unmask the beautiful truth under horrific portrayals cast against our American armed militia members, American Muslims, American white supremacists, racists, Chinese, Black activists, etc. etc. These leaders are the ones with power to empower troubled people with words respectful of real people on both sides of this irrational polarity. 

 

In this process lies the true strength of our nation. This is our truly American culture of democratic and Christian strength. Grasp it to listen and understand the other side, and build respect. This is the core defense against the current lurch toward civil unrest, disrespect, or even widespread breakdown of law and order.

 

It happened in the 60’s death, destruction, and breakdown of law and order. We as a nation just didn’t keep on keeping on then. Eighty years later we again have a beautiful challenge: pursue our God-given destiny as members of the human race, “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”

 

 

Lets keep on keeping on FTFT:

 

IN OUR many wars after our revolution, we have been on an unwitting trek to understanding that humans over other humans is not only against God and the Bible, it’s against the very fabric of human love and relationship God intended from creation. The nationwide angry polarity in health and politics needs us all to quiet down and listen. Only with patience can a few of our politicians and preachers come out from behind the Bible and God and speak the truth of the lies of supremacy plaguing our nation. There is truth. It's here in our towns and countryside. Some of our religious and political leaders here are finding the courage to speak it. It’s a good time to do so. The latest loud lie is apparently (the news says so) believed by some 70% of Republicans (all over the news) came out this past weekend: “The election was rigged, and false. I am still president.”

 

Unfortunately, our supremacy cults have renewed energy, and many more adherents among our citizenry.  In spite of obscene language and aggressive threats couched in supremacy humor, these people are to be respected. That doesn’t mean we should respect the slogans and ideas of supremacy hiding as the invisible elephant in the joined rooms of our pandemic and our violent protests. We need to name the incitement of citizen against citizen, pro-lifers against abortionists, socialists vs patriot militias, as unpatriotic, unchristian, idiotic behavior. We need to remove the misuse of our Bible, our God, slogans like pro-life, anti-socialist, and family values to see the vile truth behind the propagation of these words. Those wanting a fight to the death over supremacy, using these good terms falsely with evil intent, have wreaked enough destruction on our nation’s families and homes over the past centuries. We can, as a nation, be led away from what appears to be looming as another historical fight to the death weakening our nation and our families’ ability to thrive.

 

We can agree truth can stop our drift toward polarization leading to violence gain. Of course, we Christians all believe Jesus is the Truth.  His Truth must mean that respectful words, humble acts and real evidence are also sacred. Jesus had courage to stack his disciple band with both sides. He and St. Paul both attacked their politicians’ ideas about truth being relative, and opposed the violence of both sides in the Jewish wars of the first centuries. That’s when both sides joined in his execution (See the Bible, the four Gospels).The truth of what really happened to Jesus in his polarized worlds is now impinging on us again.

 

We need pastors and leaders to direct us toward the truth Jesus taught. Our pandemic and our systemic racism can only be healed as folks with power (religious, political and business leaders), do three things:

1)    stop hiding evidence,

2)    stop pretending there is equal truth to every side of the many disinformation and conspiracy theory voices sowing hatred for real groups of human beings.

3)    Stop joining the crowds now rushing to buy guns for fear of demonstrators and/or for fear of white supremacists.

 

As in the 60’s, and farther back in the 1780’s, there were both white and black people afraid of people with guns. From the 60’s to now the polarized worlds of demonstrators and that of right wing militants are priming for an escalation in violence in America. In 1780’s it was black slaves getting guns to rebel against rape and breakup of slave families in their homes. We today forgot that the primary reason for the 2^nd amendment’s ratification was to protect white families against slave rebellion in Virginia (Carl Bogus, U.C. Davis Law Review 309 1998). That protection took the form of independent “well organized militias,” organized for the specified purpose of quelling slave rebellions. On one side, white supremacists feared abolitionist federalists, who could send the federal army into the south to disarm the militias. On the other were mothers and fathers who wanted to protect their families from kidnap, rape, and slave trafficking. Both sides got guns, and our 2^nd amendment’s ratification arguably extended the carnage of polarized separate worlds from then into the civil war a hundred years later. Will we repeat our history again? 

 

For us now, the right wing is responsible for highest spike in gun purchasing our nation has known, over a million last April. Recently the left is beginning to buy up guns and ammo too (see Politico, October 25). The new news is it’s just about as many Democrats as Republicans buying guns. How will we avoid a civil war?

 

Our religious leaders would do well to follow folks like Bonhoeffer in Germany during the holocaust. Make room by ending right wing Christian media preachers, politicians and pundits with alternative theology fanning flames of fear and hatred against Muslims, Democrats, Planned Parenthood and Black lives matter extremists.

 

People right here in our towns have the courage to speak truth instead of remaining silent. Our folks know truth: it’s patriotic to trust our election system, proven again this November to be the best in the world. We have pride rights to our American Democracy. It’s also patriotic to trust our oldest, most respected media resources and tradition of journalism, especially when not loyal to powerful politicians. We must use that trust, or we will lose it. It takes our respected truth-tellers here in Big Horn County to come out of silence.

 

It’s a dangerous time for us to forget or ignore our history. Like then, we need Jesus now. His way is that eternal flame of truth that gets tiny, even goes underground, but is always available with persistent constant respect for others of our species' rights to exist and to be free.