Photo by Nikolas Gannon on Unsplash
November 20, 2024
Everyday.
Everyday there is something to cry about.
I get up, the cats want breakfast. I realize it’s time. As I sit on the side of the bed, even before I stand, I remember our country is in crisis.
I feed the cats, and my mind pictures me five minutes out, when I sit at my laptop with my coffee and toast, and open the New York Times.
Today, I got through several articles before the tears came.
And then I read about Iranian dissident Kianoosh Sanjari, who after decades of protesting Iran’s regime, and being repeatedly and falsely jailed and institutionalized in psychiatric hospitals, chose to end his life.
“Last Wednesday, Mr. Sanjari plummeted from a commercial building in central Tehran, hours after declaring that he would take his own life as a final act of protest if the government did not release four political prisoners by the evening. He was 42.”
Why is it this story that got me this time?
Because Sanjari is all of us, all of us who speak out against wrong. And although I have paid ZERO price for my resistance – let me say that again – I have paid ZERO price for my resistance, there is a chance that will not always be the case.
What I thought impossible up until now has now become a possibility. I don’t expect worst case scenario, but I’m no longer foolish enough or complacent enough to rule it out. None of us can afford to be.
What can I do, though, to contribute to change? My little piece, I’ve decided. I’ll continue to write and post on my blog. And Facebook. Although the Facebook piece is rather ridiculous because all my connections are of like mind. But perhaps they will share and those with whom they share will share. And perhaps my words will fall onto someone’s deaf ears.
After multiple pleadings for some little piece of information that might make it all make sense, my friend Dale finally blocked me. I wasn’t at all interested in changing his mind, I know that’s futile, I would never even try to change someone’s mind. I beseeched him, specifically him, because his decades-long career working for the federal government in a military support role. I just KNEW he would be able to tell me that magic thing that would make it all make sense. But he didn’t. And he blocked me for even having the gall to question Trump’s cabinet picks.
I’ve known him since I was 19. It’s saddening not because we were close, we were casually connected on Facebook. It’s saddening because I cannot fathom that the young man I knew at 19 has become another one of the blind followers of the cult of personality that is Donald Trump. Even back in college, he was an avid student of history with expertise in WWII. I absolutely know, beyond a doubt, that he’s smarter than this, he’s better than this, he knows to his core the situation is dire, and yet he has chosen to fall in line. He’s a good man and he’s a good soldier, always has been. And now, he is one of Trump’s best soldiers. It breaks my heart.
And now I turn back to my paper for Intro to Theology, where I read of theologians who preceded me by generations, who laid out the principles of Christian ethics. Not just “Christian”, ethics. “Ethics.” Period. Ethical principles to live by in order to have the best life, a life that you can look back on in the end and say, “I did right. I did good.”
I asked my friend Joe if my posts are starting to sound self-righteous. I’m using Bible verses to rebuke, now, and I wouldn’t have done that before seminary. He responded, “You’re learning, there’s ego there, there’s confidence.” I cringed at the word “ego”, but he’s right. He didn’t say I’m becoming self-important; he said I’ve learned and grown and changed and am confident in what I know and what I believe about one thing: ethics. The rest of my theology is in flux, big time flux, but I am confident about what constitutes an ethical and moral life. I use the word “moral” but make no mistake, the morality I’m talking about has absolutely nothing to do with sex. It has everything to do with championing the marginalized. That’s the bottom line.
We are commanded to care for the marginalized.
It is incumbent on us, not as Christians, that has nothing to do with it.
It is incumbent on us as human beings.