Down the Trump Rabbit Hole - 22 November 2021

[Sent 22 November 2021 to my wife and three daughters]

Greetings. I have been thinking about the ‘Thanksgiving’ holiday. This holiday is for me our society’s most important calendar pause. In the international community, I do not think ‘gratitude’ along with such linked traits as ‘modesty’ and ‘generosity’ define our society’s bearing or reputation. As members of/participants in this society, we must be found among those who are vigilant and radical in resisting the societal permission (expectation?) to be other than grateful. As I pause this week to concentrate on ‘giving thanks’, please know you crown my list of ‘most special life gifts’ for which I am preeminently grateful! Doug/Dad

Down theTrump Rabbit Hole - 7 July 2021

[Sent 7 July 2021 to my wife and our three daughters]

Good evening. I deeply appreciate our conversations today, recognizing my reaching the proverbial ‘three score and ten’ life marker. As this day approached, I have paused frequently to reflect in fresh ways on one answer to the question “What have these 70 years been about?” – i.e., a search for ‘a very healthy center’ (eine sehr gesunde Substance – a phrase from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s 24 July 1943 secret letter smuggled out of a Nazi prison).

To illustrate, I have inserted below the first section from the most recently revised draft of a Grand Rounds presentation on assessing patients’ spiritual wellbeing I was invited to deliver in August 2000 for the Obstetrics and Gynecology residents in the Phoenix area. The selection inserted below introduces how a search for ‘a very healthy center’ has merged/integrated my personal experience with my professional experience. The impetus for the 2000 Grand Rounds presentation came from my preparation for participating in the creation of an educational video being developed at Vanderbilt as a tool for in-servicing hospital staff re assessing patients’ spiritual needs (which Joint Commission had recently added as an accrediting standard).

To strengthen my attention, I have returned to a set of comments chosen from the writings of one of the abiding seminal/pivotal thinkers in my ‘search for a very healthy center’ – Simone Weil.

The afflicted have no need of anything else in this world except someone capable of paying attention to them. The capacity to pay attention to an afflicted person is something very rare, very difficult. Nearly all those who believe they have this capacity do not. Warmth, movements of the heart, and pity are not sufficient. The fullness of love for neighbor is simply the capacity to ask the question, ‘What is your agony?’ It is to know (recognize) that the afflicted exist, not as a unit in a collection, nor as an example of a social category labeled ‘the afflicted,’ but in all their humanity, exactly like us, who have been stamped and marked by an inimitable mark, by their affliction. For this reason, it is sufficient but also indispensable to know how to look upon them in a certain way. This look is first of all an attentive look, when the soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being that it is looking at, just as it is, in all its truth. It is only capable of this if it is capable of attention.  Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

With unending love, Doug/Dad
_________________

[Selection from my essay -- Assessing a Patient’s Spiritual Well-being]

For several years, the senior physician – David McRay, MD -- at the Appalachia community health center where I worked (1997-2006 as a member of the executive leadership team) and I met weekly to review his most perplexing and burdening patient encounters. Consider this summary narrative of one such case:

It was a busy Wednesday afternoon. The patient – new to our health center -- was in her late-20s, had four children, and was now 32-weeks pregnant. The fetus’ fundal height was smaller than expected. She had received no prenatal care. A colleague asked David to do an ultrasound. The patient was sitting on the edge of the exam table when David and a nurse entered the room. David helped the patient into a supine position. She was covered with a sheet up to her blouse. The nurse turned down the light. As David began the exam, the patient said barely above a whisper, “I have a lot of scars.” David’s first thought – “surgery . . . perhaps a previous c-section”. Once he saw the scars, he thought – “accident . . . perhaps a burn”. He asked the patient, “Did you have a car accident or . . . ?” She interrupted and, as she starred at the wall, said quietly, “My mother set me on fire when I was three.” David had no response. It turned out the baby was fine. As we later reflected on the case, David explained to me, “Her life is so far removed from my range of experiences. I did not know how to respond. She will never be free of this childhood experience, these scars. If my mother had . . .” His voiced trailed off.

When the patient whispered “I have a lot of scars”, she was making an existential as well as a literal comment about her wellbeing. Simply put, she was saying, “My story is broken. Can you help me fix it.” (Howard Brody, MD/PhD, is my source for this ‘story’ way to frame a patient’s meaning.)

Patients hope that entering a hospital or a clinic will be no more than a quick pit stop or, at most, a repair shop delay in their day-to-day routines and life journeys. The circumstances that lead patients to seek medical attention are often benign and/or soon resolved. In these situations, assessing a patient from a spiritual perspective may remain (by patient choice and/or by caregivers’ choice) on the periphery. By ‘periphery’ I mean that caregivers remain attentive to subtle or incidental indications that, in addition to the patient’s immediate problem, there may be a deeper ‘wound’. Such indications put the caregivers in the tough position of deciding whether they have the time, emotional capacity, expertise, and resources to determine if indeed there is a deeper ‘wound’. The circumstances that lead patients to seek medical attention may in fact have to do with a deeper ‘wound’. In these situations, caregivers need a language and perspective re spiritually in order to attend to this deeper ‘wound’.

Defining ‘Spiritual/ity’

The root meaning for ‘distress’ has to do with pressure or strain. To be distressed, therefore, is to be tense, troubled, oppressed, threatened. ‘Spiritual distress’ has to do with the loss of peace, joy, hope, and resolve individuals experience (to varying degrees) when faced with unsettling life circumstances that threaten to overwhelm their core paradigm by/within which they live day-to-day.

I begin with the premise that all individuals are more than the insights made possible through various empirical analyses. In the health care sphere, this premise implies that patients are more than potential or actual illnesses and accidents; professionals, more than highly skilled scientists/technicians. To consider this ‘more’, a vocabulary and a manner of discourse -- in addition to scientific/clinical language -- are required. I have found that most (perhaps all) individuals have, with varying levels of sophistication, such vocabulary and manner of discourse. Such vocabulary and manner of discourse disclose, in the most elemental and inclusive way, each individual’s spirituality. An individual’s spirituality reaches, shapes, and sustains his/her integrity (i.e., wholeness, oneness, character).

The definition of ‘spirituality’ that has worked well over the years for me in opening discussions with health care professionals is: ‘Spirituality’ has to do with the sort of person a patient is, with the basis upon which patients’ lives have integrity and balance. Patients reveal their spiritual identity when they share their core ideas and life values and when they explain how they sustain these ideas and values. Fear, loneliness, and guilt as well as happiness, contentment, and wonder are windows into a patient’s spirituality.

The definition of and approach to spirituality used in a hospital, in a clinic, and by a medical team need to be inclusive of all the patients for whom care is being delivered. Not all patients are religious. Not all patients are affiliated with a particular religion. Not all patients are members of any one sub-division of one particular religion. And crucial non-religious aspects of every patient’s spirituality are missed when ‘being spiritual’ is viewed as interchangeable with or a subset of ‘being religious’. Concerning these missed windows into a patient’s spirituality, here are some examples:

• a morning/evening walk
• participation in community/civic organizations a refreshing hobby (e.g., photography or gardening or hiking or . . .)
• participation in volunteer community service activities
• reminders of life-changing experiences
• travel opportunities
• inspiring music
• the company of a pet
• a thought-provoking book
• a favorite art gallery or museum
• social pleasures (e.g., a glass of wine or a pleasant dinner or a theater outing or a sports event)
• a special friend

 

Down the Trump Rabbit Hole - 20 June 2021

[Sent 20 June 2021 to my wife and our three daughters]

Greetings. I find myself pausing frequently this weekend to consider my personal narrative in relation to this year’s overlapping celebrations of Father’s Day (now an international holiday that – along with Mother’s Day -- calls special attention to parental ties/loyalties) and of Juneteenth (now – with President Biden’s signing the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law this past Thursday -- a federal holiday that has been commemorated widely but selectively since 19 June 1865 when Union Army General Gordon Granger announced and began enforcing the freedom of slaves in Galveston, TX). My focus/core for parenting (and for all encounters however fleeting or enduring) was clarified/set forty years ago as I responded to the then recently published Parenting for Peace and Justice by James and Kathleen McGinnis. (Yes, I wore my peace symbol t-shirt yesterday and am wearing my ‘Literacy and Justice for All’ t-shirt today!)

I recommended to you a few months ago Andrew Ward’s The Slaves’ War: The Civil War in the Words of Former Slaves in which former slaves are given voice to guide readers chronologically through the war years and the years immediately after the war. I found this attempt to see from/through their experiences and observations to be illuminating, sobering, haunting, convicting. I fought off the instinct – common to the affluent/privileged -- to rush, to gloss over, to look away, to talk back. I am deeply disturbed that neither my formal education nor my family/community upbringing exposed me to the painful realities/perspectives the former slaves recall. Instead, ‘founding myths’ (see Ray Raphael’s Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past) that are deeply engrained/entrenched in our society’s official self-understanding block the way, offer reassuring distraction, create an easy conscience, spawn fearful reactions to accurate information.

You will remember our many discussions of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s December 1942 After Ten Years essay he wrote for his parents, his siblings (and their children), his closest friend Eberhard Bethge, and his fellow covert resisters embedded in the Abwehr who had all been courageously resisting -- covertly and/or overtly -- Hitler and the Nazis for a decade. By late 1942, Nazis resisters such as the Bonhoeffer family had reason to hope. Germany’s military losses on the Eastern/Russian Front had set in motion elaborate plans for stopping Hitler by arrest or assassination. Dietrich and many for whom he wrote these reflections were arrested and executed in the months ahead. Dietrich’s father read the After Ten Years essay to the assembled family on Christmas Day 1942. I have been privileged to have had the assistance of Renate Bethge – Eberhard’s wife and Dietrich’s favored niece by his older sister Ursala -- as I revised and finalized my translation of After Ten Years (including the fragment inserted below). Words/phrases in parentheses offer additional nuances, add implied ideas, or indicate alternative translations.

Dietrich’s ‘The View from Below’ description/assessment -- a fragment most likely written at the time he wrote the December 1942 essay – has been singularly pivotal for my life decisions and self-examination since I discovered the fragment in a 1974 graduate seminar reading assignment.

The View from Below

 It remains an experience of unparalleled (incomparable) value that we have learned to see for once the great events of world history from below – through the perspective of the barred (put out, cut out, blocked), the suspects, the badly treated, the powerless, the oppressed (restrained), the scoffed (derided, mocked), in short the perspective of those who suffer.  (It is) only in this time when neither bitterness nor envy (jealousy) has cauterized (corroded, gnawed away) the heart that we see with new eyes great and small, fortunate and unfortunate, strong and weak; that our view of greatness, humaneness, justice, and compassion has become clearer, more free, more incorruptible (not subject to bribes); indeed, (that we see) that personal suffering is a more suitable (qualified) key (code, cipher), a more fruitful principle, than is personal good fortune for exploring the world by observation and action.  It follows that this perspective from below will not be the partisan claim of those forever discontent, but that we are centered in all life’s dimensions by a higher contentment that is grounded properly beyond ‘from below’ and ‘from above’.  And so it is affirmed.

I have to date found no indication that learning to see from below was a previously established unparalleled or incomparable value, goal, or expectation for Dietrich, his family, or his fellow conspirators when they committed themselves to a resisting posture toward the Nazis. In fact, it seems to me that they at least in part began resisting the Nazis in an attempt to defend what they considered to be ‘cultured’. Learning to see from below was thus an unanticipated result to which Dietrich proposed by December 1942 to assign “unparalleled (incomparable) value”.

I imagine asking Dietrich to identify when along the 1933-42 continuum he became aware of this learning to see from below experience. Did all recipients of the essay agree with Dietrich’s unparalleled (incomparable) assessment of learning to see from below? How does seeing from below contrast with seeing from above? Are individuals born into from below circumstances as unaware of their view as are those born into from above circumstances? How far and how long into seeing from below before one cannot recover a seeing from above view? How far below should children see?

Not all eye opening experiences are life changing experiences that reconfigure our unparalleled (incomparable) values. I have inserted below the current draft of a spectrum I first created several decades ago as a tool for differentiating the differences – in some cases, very subtle differences – among the reactions/responses of the privileged who see from below. The spectrum is organized around several key terms or phrases we have discussed often as a family – e.g., ‘affluent’ (to flow to/toward), ‘respect’ (to look back/again), ‘radical’ (to the root), ‘genuinely present’ (with integrity).

The resolve to learn to see from below drew me to Barbara and shaped our parenting attempts when you – Erin, Kimberly, Morgan -- were children. We wanted you to always find us on the ‘+’ side of the spectrum. We are encouraged (i.e., infused with courage) as we observe you now as adults also tracking on the ‘+’ side of the spectrum!

Much love, Doug/Dad
____________________

But what does it mean to ‘learn to see from below’?

(-3)_____ (-2)_____ (-1)_____ (0)_____ (+1)_____ (+2)_____ (+3)

DISPOSITION -3: Those who demonstrate a complete lack of respect for deeply wounded sufferers by noticing them solely for the purpose of exploiting or eliminating them.

DISPOSITION -2: Those who demonstrate a complete lack of respect for deeply wounded sufferers by noticing them solely for the purpose of shunning/avoiding them.

DISPOSITION -1: Those who routinely disregard deeply wounded sufferers, but who are latently predisposed to shun/avoid them if significantly disturbed by them and who are not predisposed to object to their being exploited or eliminated.

DISPOSITION 0: Those who are not predisposed to shun/avoid deeply wounded sufferers, but who do not respect them deeply enough to resist their being exploited or eliminated, thereby forfeiting the opportunity ‘to see the great events of world history from below’.

DISPOSITION +1: Those who express a resolve to stand with deeply wounded sufferers and thereby ‘to see the great events of world history from below’, but who turn away rather than take the radical (i.e., ‘to the root’) actions necessary to learn ‘to see . . . from below’.

DISPOSITION +2: Those whose respect for deeply wounded sufferers leads them to take the radical (i.e., ‘to the root’) actions that result in the opportunity ‘to see the great events of world history from below’, knowing this experience will be life changing.

DISPOSITION +3: Those for whom the opportunity ‘to see the great events of world history’ from the perspective of deeply wounded sufferers is of such value (i.e., of ‘unparalleled value’) that they make professional and personal choices that sustain and maximize their efforts to ‘see . . . from below’ to life’s end.

Down the Trump Rabbit Hole - 26 April 2021

Sent 26 April 2021 to my wife and our three daughters]

Greetings. I trust you are well. As an answer to “What does Doug/Dad do?” -- I have inserted below a communication I sent the 200+ surgeons Ira Kodner (WashU emeritus colorectal surgeon) and I have gathered/nurtured over the past decade into a surgical ethics working group. They are all variously invested in advocating/educating for surgical ethics in surgery departments across the country. The communication I sent them yesterday is #44 in a series I began in May 2018, sharing with them ethics education tools and resources I have created during my career. 

Also, when the Derek Chauvin trial began, I began reading Andrew Ward’s The Slaves’ War: The Civil War in the Words of Former Slaves (2008). I found the attempt to see from/through their experiences and observations to be illuminating, sobering, haunting, convicting. I fought off the instinct to rush, to gloss over, to look away, to talk back. In his Author’s Note at the end, Ward repeated the insights careful (and courageous) readers will gather inductively as the slaves guide them chronologically through the war years and the years immediately after the war. The slaves gave me a painfully realistic context within which to place Derek Chauvin’s trial.

Doug
_______________

[Sent 25 April 2021 to our surgical ethics working group members]

Greetings from St. Louis and WashU. For my ‘Surgical Ethics Education Resources -- #44’ communication, I am sharing with you two versions of a PowerPoint slide (inserted below) I created for educational purposes when differentiating the ethical dimension of care in a comprehensive/multi-faceted pause – informal or formal, individual or as a team -- to reflect on a case/surgery. Five dimensions of care are identified, with each dimension requiring a distinctive professional language to answer a specific question. The five questions are intentionally worded to concentrate on the core accountability associated with each dimension of care.

 These two versions of the PowerPoint slide – one worded for ongoing cases, the other worded for retrospective review of cases -- draw attention to layers, complexities, and nuances too often missed/absent on rounds, in EMR notes, and/or during M&M conferences.

The use of the word ‘language’ points to the specialized vocabulary and syntax necessary for each of the five dimensions of care to be considered/discussed. Also, I use the word ‘spiritual’ in an existential sense that includes/respects those who self-identify as ‘not religious’ as well as those who self-identify as ‘religious’.

Physicians/surgeons, nurses, social workers, and allied clinical colleagues are necessarily most fluent with the clinical/scientific language. Those who staff risk management are most fluent with the legal/regulative dimension of care. Those responsible for operations and administrative supervision are most fluent with the economic/business dimension of care. Palliative care teams and chaplains are most fluent with the spiritual dimension of care.

For patient care to be authentically humane and just, all five dimensions of care need to blend, to weave together, to be evident, to be respected.

Doug

 

 

Down the Trump Rabbit Hole - 7 February 2021

[Sent 7 February 2021 to my wife and our three daughters

Good afternoon. I have a few suggestions for your mindfulness and self-examination during Black History Month. This annual celebration of black culture and individual achievement was introduced in 1970 at Kent State University and had spread across the US by 1976 when President Ford recognized Black History Month as part of the nation’s bi-centennial celebration.

One source I read each week during the year is the St. Louis American, a weekly newspaper published continuously since 1928 that reports local and national news through an African-American editorial lens. I was deeply moved by the obituary in this week’s edition for Dr. Lee Blount, Jr. (1932-2021). Dr. Blount was a St. Louis general surgeon with a 30-year career after finishing his Homer G. Phillips Hospital’s surgery residency. And he was a highly respected civil rights activist, a remarkable community builder, an advocate for young people’s exposure to the arts/humanities, and a sports enthusiast. I encourage you to read the obituary for Dr. Blount. For more details about Dr. Blount, click on the following link --

http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/lee-blount-surgeon-athlete-dies-at-88/article_12250052-5c0a-11eb-8f4a-fb8928847d81.html

I invite you to join me in pausing this month to be very intentional in identifying a Dr. Blount in your community you would otherwise not have seen/appreciated. I anticipate that our doing so can stretch our attentiveness and respect in each month of the year. To this end, I have inserted below a meditation I wrote many years ago in an effort to I hold myself accountable.

Be well and safe. Boundless love.

Doug/Dad

DISTURBED FROM PEACEFUL SLUMBER

To whom/where do I turn now that my eyes and ears have opened to the abused, the displaced, the disabled, the destitute. I had no idea how many and how near are my sisters and brothers who scavenge garbage cans in search for food, who cannot (or need not) read the list of ingredients on food cans, who steal to survive, who wake each day to a violent ordeal. I had no idea how surely my closets, my refrigerator, my diet, my choices for work, my recreation, my morning shower, my education all settle any question about whether I am affluent. I had no idea how entangled my lifestyle is with an economy that carelessly consumes the earth’s resources, that encourages selfish fantasies, that lures impoverished kids with ads holding out impossible dreams, that offers me an easy conscience by pointing to charitable gifts and taxes.

Why had I not noticed the family resemblance with these sisters and brothers of mine? Was it embarrassment? haste? fear? economic prejudice? the ease with which I allegorized ‘rich’ and ‘poor’?

I am without excuse. Endless blows dull these sisters and brothers of mine. I have added to the wind that has blown out the light in their eyes. I have only now realized that the task is not to make them materially rich, yet another form of slavery. No, the task is to make them free -- free to dream, to hope, to risk, to rest, to love, to choose.

May my conscience be disturbed by the loss of dignity ‘getting rich’ and ‘staying rich’ imposes.

May my self avoid self-serving values and habits.

May my lifestyle maximize the diversity of individuals who feel welcome in my home.

May my possessions be rid of anything I value more than “one of the least of these”.

May my introspection allow dis-ease with my being materially affluent.

May my responses encourage a way of being together that humanizes rather than exploits.

Down the Trump Rabbit Hole - 18 January 2021

[Sent 18 January 2021 to my wife and our three daughters]

Good evening. I trust you are all well and safe. Mom and I have spent much of the day on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day watching documentaries, comparing/contrasting our experiences with racism as we came of age in the 1960s South (Mom in Montgomery, AL; I in small town West KY), and resolving afresh to assign ultimate value to pursuing justice. It is simple enough to say “I am for justice”. It is much more complicated to be just. The primary barrier -- the sacrifices and the risks associated with following through on the resolve to be just. Consider an exercise I adapted from philosopher John Rawls’ ‘veil of ignorance’ to use as an ethics educational tool with physicians, nurses, and social workers as they clarify their priorities re access to and distribution of limited resources. 

 

 

First, visualize the range of possible life circumstances made vivid in the ring of photographs. Second, remember how fragile and unpredictable one’s life circumstances are. Third, imagine you do not know what your life circumstances (e.g., your age, ethnicity, health, work, education, financial resources, nationality) will be; imagine you are standing behind ‘a veil of ignorance’. Fourth, without knowing which life circumstances will be your lot, explain how you would propose limited resources should be accessed and distributed.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is best known for his 1963 ‘I have a dream’ speech. I have inserted below selections from two lesser known King speeches that have for decades been centering for me. May these selections be similarly centering for you.

Endless love, Doug/Dad

 [Closing to King’s 25 March 1965 address at the conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery March]

. . . . I have a message that I would like to leave with Alabama this evening. . . . We know that it was normalcy in Marion that led to the brutal murder of Jimmy Lee Jackson. It was normalcy in Birmingham that led to the murder on Sunday morning of four beautiful, unoffending, innocent girls. It was normalcy on Highway 80 that led state troopers to use tear gas and horses and billy clubs against unarmed human beings who were simply marching for justice. It was normalcy by a cafe in Selma, Alabama, that led to the brutal beating of Reverend James Reeb. It is normalcy all over our country that leaves the Negro perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of vast ocean of material prosperity. It is normalcy all over Alabama that prevents the Negro from becoming a registered voter.

No, we will not allow Alabama to return to normalcy. The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy that recognizes the dignity and worth of all of God’s children. The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy that allows judgment to run down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy of true peace, the normalcy of justice.

. . . . I must admit to you that there are still some difficult days ahead. We are still in for a season of suffering in many of the black belt counties of Alabama, many areas of Mississippi, many areas of Louisiana. I must admit to you that there are still jail cells waiting for us, and dark and difficult moments. . . . We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. . . .

I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?" Somebody’s asking, "How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?" Somebody’s asking, "When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?" Somebody’s asking, "When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, and truth buried?" I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because "truth crushed to earth will rise again." How long? Not long, . . .

http://okra.stanford.edu/media/audio/650325026.mp3

[Closing to a sermon King delivered 4 February 1968, two months before his assassination]

Every now and then, I guess we all think realistically about that day when we will be victimized with what is life's final common denominator—that something that we call death. We all think about it. And every now and then I think about my own death and I think about my own funeral. And I don't think of it in a morbid sense. And every now and then I ask myself, "What is it that I would want said?" And I leave the word to you this morning.

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards—that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school.

I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others.

I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question.

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry.

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked.

I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison.

I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I want to say.

http://okra.stanford.edu/media/audio/DrumMajorInstinct.mp3 

Down the Trump Rabbit Hole - 7 January 2021

[Sent 7 January 2021 to my wife and our three daughters]

Good morning on this very dark and grievous day. I trust you are well and safe, both in reference to the devastating coronavirus pandemic and now also in reference to the unparalleled political/societal meltdown yesterday in Washington, DC. Mitt Romney’s pointed speech in the Senate Chamber after Congress reconvened last night had an appropriately sober tone. By contrast, the shock and dissociation expressed by Mitch McConnell et al Republican officials seemed disingenuous, self-serving, misleading, and indefensibly late since they have been in unwavering lockstep with Trump from Day One four years ago. And Lindsey Graham’s lacing his “enough . . . count me out” comments with humorous asides distracted from the gravity of the moment and trivialized his complicity.

Trump called his supporters to the city. He stood before them yesterday morning, repeating yet again his false claims about the election. He reassured them “We will never concede”. He incited them to head to the Capitol to “take back the country”. 

Heavily armed they stormed the Capitol. Trump watched the assault on TV for hours. He addressed those who vandalized the Capitol as “very special”, telling them “We love you”. He delayed calling in the National Guard.

 We will never forget the surreal images for which Trump and his enablers are responsible. He should be arrested. They should resign.

 

 

 

 

 

 As Mom and I watched yesterday’s unfolding tragedy through the afternoon and evening, I recalled a photograph I made (inserted below) during one of my annual visits with Eberhard and Renate Bethge in their home near Bonn.

As we stood together in his book-lined home office, Eberhard pulled down a worn Bible to show me where his ‘friend in the singular’ (and Renate’s uncle) Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-45) had written ‘9.11.38’ in the margin after the destructive/violent Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) and underlined these words – “They burned all the houses of God in the land” (Psa. 74:8).

‘6 January 2021’ is now in our mental margin, on our list of disillusioning national dates.

By late 1942 and after a decade of covert as well as overt opposition to Hitler and the Nazis, resistors such as the Bonhoeffer family had reason to hope. Germany’s military losses on the Eastern/Russian Front had set in motion elaborate plans for stopping Hitler by arrest or assassination. Bonhoeffer wrote a reflective essay for his immediate family and fellow conspirators titled After Ten Years. His father read the essay to the assembled family on Christmas Day 1942. Bonhoeffer closed the essay with this haunting question – ‘Are we still of any use?’ I find his painfully candid response to this question timely for us as we look/move past the Trump presidency. Here is my translation of his response –

We have become silent witnesses of evil actions. We have been drenched by many storms. We have learned the art of disguise (displacement, counterfeiting) and ambiguous speech. We have through experience become suspicious of people and remain often culpable (guilty, at fault) regarding truthfulness and free speech. We have been mellowed (made brittle, pliable) or perhaps even become cynical through intolerable (unbearable) conflicts. To be useful, what we need to be is unpretentious (without artificiality), modest, straightforward individuals – not geniuses, cynics, despisers of humanity, cunning (clever) tacticians. Will our strength to resist (stand against) being unnaturally shaped be strong enough and our genuineness (uprightness, sincerity, honesty) with ourselves remain relentless (unsparing) enough that we can find our way back again to simplicity and straightforwardness?

To be of some use in the days ahead, we must scrub ourselves clean. Only then might we be in a legitimate (dis)position to encourage others to scrub themselves clean.

Doug/Dad