“Alice: Really, now you ask me, I don’t think— Mad Hatter: Then you shouldn’t talk.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland
During times of great upheaval, we look for something to balance us, anything that will provide us with ballast in what feels like a storm. It is a rare thing to find, rarer still to find that steadying hand or even that strong arm to give us a feeling that someone else is standing near, lending strength, and will not let us stumble or fall flat on our face.
Too often, what we find instead are those we once believed had our backs are the first to run, the first to hightail it for the door. Then we sit in the center of chaos, wondering how we will sort through brokenness and shattered dreams to make a new life. Too often, the first response is to lash out; we want to know why. Why did you do this? Why did you run? Why did you hurt me? Why didn’t you stay? Why aren’t you here? Oddly, the answer isn’t going to help us fix what is broken or rebuild the life we thought we wanted. The answer is often worse than not knowing.
Within all the chaos, we have meltdowns, and people want to know why; what is wrong with us. They want to offer their best advice during our weakest moments. Instead of listening to us, to what we need, they slide in with their best recommendations to cure what ails us. It really is fascinating how closely linked our pain is to our expectations and how rare it is for others to understand we have them. This is especially true for those of us who spend much of our time alone. When we venture out, it is with our very public face, one we show to keep others at arm’s length and out of our personal world.
When we sit in moments of silence, it is sometimes obvious to us that what we wanted wasn’t for us. If it were, we wouldn’t have had to fight so hard to keep it. I think this is true of nearly every part of our life, from childhood to old age. Those transient things are there to teach us, and no matter how badly we wish they were ours forever, and ever, and a day; they are just lessons in life. So sometimes, we weep, wail, and rattle the bars; then, we move on to the next thing that hopefully will be better for the lessons we have learned. Yet still, we look back and wonder what we did wrong, why we weren’t good enough when we gave all we had, opened ourselves and made ourselves vulnerable to a world that terrified us.
Mad Hatter: “I know a thing or two about liking people, and in time, after much chocolate and cream cake, ‘like’ turns into ‘what was his name again?'”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland
Dear God, in the interest of not repeating myself and railing at you about the dead children and lunatics with guns, I skipped Uvalde. To not step on toes, you know, those over-the-top ones who claim to speak in the name of your Son, I also skipped Dodd and the devastation it has wrought across this nation on women and girls. I have kept my peace about some of the lunatics still inhabiting positions of power across this nation and wielding it to destroy the lives of those who are different. Haven’t we seen this before? You remember Germany, Russia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Cambodia, Darfur, and the first Ukraine, just in the last century. When we add the Slave Trade and North American Natives, God, we are not doing a very good job down here left to our own devices.
angel dances gleefully in Hell with all your inattention as he leads the faithless towards even worse malevolent acts every day. With each mass murder, as the bodies lie bleeding, unrecognizable from the destruction of the bullets shot from weapons meant for battlefields, these pretenders offer up “thoughts and prayers,” I can only wonder to whom; surely it can’t be you or your son.
these murderers. You know all of this, as it happens, don’t you? You see the fuckery down here, and you know it is getting worse by the day. We have members of Congress armed and dangerous, bragging they wouldn’t have lost if they had planned the recent insurrection. We have wars inside our nation perpetrated on those who don’t look or pray the ‘right’ way. Every small step we took forward in the last one hundred years is being lost, stripped away by a small minority, and they do it under your banner. People are so afraid, and that fear is turning into hatred; soon, God, we will be a nation at war again, though it will be far worse this time, and the body count will be yours.
kindness every single day. So much compassion, in this broken world. Don’t you hear the voices raised begging you to shine a light, send warmth to those in need, send healing to those hurting and broken?
Do you know sometimes you can go most of your adult life focused on the wrong things, working hard toward a future that in the end will not be what you planned or expected. Never mind as you sit and contemplate where you are and what you have done, your dreams have not been fulfilled. You can break yourself, physically and emotionally for that pot of gold at the end of that proverbial rainbow and find nothing but pyrite. You can give everything worthwhile up, sacrifice to the pantheon and what you will have in the end will be rooms filled with the chaff of broken dreams. In a world that values the trappings of success above nearly all forms of decency and compassion, far too many of us have fallen victim to the sales job. Now we are learning, there are no ‘do overs,’ for our failures and regrets.
our way through the maze of often terrifying new experiences? Many do, while some cling to what we know in an attempt to stave off the changes we see around us. The bombardment of information, especially social norms and expectations that may be significantly different from what we know is enough to make our heads spin and our hearts stutter to a standstill.
a close brush with our fragility, this lesson remains with us for the remainder of our years, we either become risk-averse or alternatively we become what is now known as adrenalin junkies. It is an important lesson to learn, our mortality put in perspective, our place in the world filtered down into more realistic terms, more digestible bites. Over time, there will be more masterclasses to embrace, more blows to our confidence and we will in most cases survive them to tell the stories to the next generation.
ambitions are focused. We are insulted by the very suggestion that we might not be ready, or all the Gods forbid we may not know all we need to know.
know it has been quite some time since we last talked, but I thought we should have a quick chat. I think perhaps my quiet, private prayers may be getting lost in the cacophony sent to you from the podiums of Congress, the pulpits of the prayers for-profit and State Houses across this nation called “Thoughts and Prayers.” I am not certain where to start, there is so much to cover, and I need to push it from my heart to your plate. I know, truly that you have much to take care of so I will try not to take too much time and only pick the big stuff, but God, really it is getting bad, and you might want to consider a lightning bolt or two just to get folks attention.
who claim your favor are acting like early pagans on the day of Moloch sacrifices. What more must happen before you start with some smiting, or at least some assistance for the rest of us?
side of the debate. This disease of extremism is destroying us all, making us fearful to speak up and speak our mind on any subject. Reasoned debate is no longer possible, and the ridiculous must be accepted as the new normal no matter how it harms others. Cruelty seems to be an acceptable alternative to civility. Truthfully? There is so much nuanced ugly to the past five years, political correctness combined with the legislative rape of civil rights, including voting and women’s autonomy it is hard to know where to even start. But God, you cannot possibly have intended for us to walk back every single gain we made, did you look down and say, “Nah, this was too much let’s make them suffer.”
the halls of Congress, on the Bench of SCOTUS and scattered throughout the land, in legislative bodies simply working their evil, pursuing power with the thirst of a man who has walked across Death Valley without water to quench him. 
Recently I have been watching social media and the disruption to our social fabric. This isn’t of course new, it is though greater, larger and more ugly. Once upon a time Facebook and others like it came along and invaded our consciousness, invaded our lives in ways no one then could have predicted back in 2004 when Facebook first hit the internet with its innocuous and simple strategy to connect us with family and friends. Today, we are not only connected, we are divided, fighting over politics and anything else. Families are falling apart, lifelong friends are participating in virtual battles reminiscent of WWF cage matches, friends and strangers alike joining in or sitting on the sidelines with popcorn to see who will be emotionally destroyed this time. There is no room for the moderate in this new virtual reality, it is all or nothing proposition in every discussion, every issue must be pro or con, no middle ground is accepted.
find myself dragged down in the muck, mired in name calling and character assignation (mine) until I bow out of the conversation, defeated by the sheer ugliness of the attacks. These always end with me wondering how my friend or family member could sit back and allow these strangers, these new friends of theirs to attack my character and intellect without mercy simply because of my disagreement with a position. I am stunned by the vitriol within the virtual world of social media. I am brought to my knees some days, but truthfully over the past ten years this has been escalating, the introduction of social media and our ability to sit behind a computer screen to communicate without repercussion has shattered previous norms. I am always hurt by the unwillingness of my friends and family to stop the attacks, I always assume it is fear that stops them. Fear of retribution or ridicule from these friends with very specific and often extreme views.
to something less than, is well deserved. If on the other hand, social media simply provides an outlet for all the worst and is not representative of us, as a people than still we fail but we have the opportunity to redeem ourselves.
more worshipful adherence to a party line moving further and further toward extremes. There is no room any longer for moderation, freedom of thought or thoughtful thinking. Any challenge is considered traitorous and opens the challenger up to being pilloried in the public square. Nevertheless, I continue to challenge. I continue to ask questions. I continue to think freely rather than being led like a lemming to the edge of the cliff. I continue to seek the best answers, no matter where that answer comes from and look for how to fix problems in the best way possible for the nation, not just for those I consider allies and friends. I still believe we have a nation worth saving for all of us. Perhaps I am naïve, yet I believe all our citizens are worth saving and while some are certainly worthy of demonizing based on their horrendous behavior, they are nonetheless part of the fabric of this nation and we must find the means to deal with them within the bounds of our laws, our norms and our hopefulness in a better future.
I think we must go much further back to find the initial cracks. The first crack, when LBJ signed Civil Rights and the parties shifted. The next with Nixon and the Southern Strategy. The continuation with Reagan and Trickle Down Economics, shifting wealth from the middle to the top creating larger and larger gaps in income each decade since. Barack Obama’s election simple brought fear to the surface, fear of other and fear that what White Folks had been hearing for years was coming to fruition, they were no longer the dominate majority. With the election of Donald Trump, that fear showed its ugly underbelly, it is manifest across the nation and of course vibrant and quivering on Social Media.
I have written this, rewritten this and then written it again. My words have stopped one hundred times. My ability to place into words, written or otherwise my thoughts on the tragedy that is our current national mood, I am at a loss.
uses every opportunity to politicize death and mayhem, to feed our fear and fury. We are spiraling down the rabbit hole toward anarchy and those who would be king, they sit and rub their hands together gleefully as we fulfill their mad desire.
QBG_Tilted Tiara 