bernieblogdotcom1

This morning the Gospel lesson I heard, John 20:19-31 — which is the lesson suggested by the Revised Common Lectionary and would have been read from tens of thousands of Christian church pulpits all around the world, I suppose, maybe more — began with a statement that the doors of the house where the disciples were meeting “were locked for fear of the Jews.”  The lesson ended with John’s affirmation that his words were “written so that you (his readers) would come to believe (or continue to believe) that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

When the lesson was finished, we all joined in a printed affirmation which, like using of the Lectionary to select the Sundays’ scripture readings, also seems to have become more common in churches in recent years. The reader said, “This is the Word of the Lord,” and we all said, “Thanks be to God!”

The doors were locked for fear of “the Jews,” words written so that I and other readers of John’s book would come or continue “to believe” and “have life in (Jesus’) name.”

The disciples, who were themselves Jews, were hiding in fear of “the Jews?” I am to believe such a thing, sounds like, in order to have some sort of life in Jesus’ name? And I am also to believe, and say, that what I’ve heard is the Word of the Lord, and I should be thankful to God?

Good grief! I’m glad the children had already left the sanctuary by the time all of this happened. I wish they had been gone all of those times over the years when I also read it and said it as a worship leader and preacher. In the thickening fog of my dotage I begin to understand why Boomers and Millennials and others just don’t believe this stuff anymore and choose not to come.

I mean, how is hearing what sounds like our faith ancestors feared Jews categorically and then affirming it as God’s Word different from hearing a proposition that all Muslims should be feared categorically, or all Negroes, or all Irish, Latinos, or Swedes?

Such a thing would be nonsense, unkind, unpatriotic, and heresy…right?

So why do we let it continue in church without apology or much explanation or adjustment? Talk about misinformation and fostering it! Why did I let myself do it? For 45 years! Good grief!

I should be ashamed of myself! I am. A little anyway. At the same time I’m hopeful the future church will do better than I did. There are signs. I think.

            Alice and I had a conversation about giving and getting this morning. She had read an article by a child psychologist who posited that cell phones have contributed unintentionally, though greatly, to our children’s understanding of life as more a matter of what they can get from it rather than what they can give to it. It had something to do with the magnetic attraction cell phones have for the people that use them because of the instant reward the phones, like drugs, can provide. Something about chemicals that get released in a person’s system (thus providing a good or high feeling) whenever she or he gets a call or text message from a friend she or he cares about or wins at a game being played on the device. And winning (or getting the prize or acclamation) and feeling good (or getting high, which creates good feeling) is what life’s about, after all.

Mmmmm. It got me to thinking, about the church among other things, and about how maybe the church (and other things) are unwittingly contributing to this sea-change shift in our values in 21st century America from values that are outwardly directed to values that focus inwardly toward self gratification, satisfaction, and the convenience of the worshiper rather than on his or her spiritual nourishment.

Take as one small example the perceived importance these days of “the offering” in the week to week worship services in Protestant churches in this country. (I’m specifically not talking about the offering in Roman Catholic worship practice mainly because I’m not Catholic and don’t know much about it, but also because I have a hunch the rubrics of the Mass are better protected from change by local authorities.) In Protestant churches the act of making an offering is down-played more and more, it seems to me, and that is simply not good for the worshiper — who needs to give and do it intentionally and publicly for his or her well-being. Nor will it be good for the church ultimately.

Just recently in the wonderfully active and nourishing small Presbyterian church where Alice and I worship and are active in the life of the congregation, the session decided to discontinue the ages-old practice of providing dated weekly offering envelops for congregants to use in giving their gifts each week. Too few people were using them to justify the cost was the explanation, which I understand. More and more folks are making their act of offering by way of placing a folded check in the plate, I guess, or they’re doing it beforehand by one or another modern means of electronic debit or payment, something the church treasurer (who is one of the brightest and articulate lay persons I have ever met, incidentally) promoted in a Moment for Stewardship on a recent Sunday.

Still, I wish the Session hadn’t done away with the old-fashioned weekly offering envelopes. For one thing, it gave the folks whose family business habit is to write just one big check for the church each month, quarter, or year along with the “bills” that are being paid, a way to participate in the act of offering each week without just looking away and letting the plate pass by. If there is just a dollar (or even nothing) in the little envelop, nobody knows, you see…except the treasurer, and he knows what’s going on. Now, with no little envelops, we’re officially discouraged from the act of making an offering, which is one of those rare outwardly/”otherly” directed acts that we don’t do nearly enough of these days and our children don’t see nearly enough of while they’re busy getting high from their cell phones.

If only they were still in the worship service when the offering happens each week, rather than having been dismissed for children’s church or Sunday school before the gospel lesson and sermon.

But that’s a topic for another blog on another day. Thanks as always for listening.

Nathan Leslie, the pastor of my hometown church in western Pennsylvania (Bessemer Presbyterian) published a thoughtful and helpful essay in the congregation’s December newsletter about the origins of the seriously-over-the-top consumerism we Americans experience this time of year. Thought you might appreciate what Nathan had to say too:

As much as Santa Claus has become the poster child, and even idol on the altar of, of American consumerism at Christmas, there is a growing sense among Christians that we need to recover the original St. Nicholas. The true Nicholas was a Christian pastor and bishop, who is the ultimate example of humility, sacrifice, generosity, Christian faith and deep love for the underprivileged, especially children. It’s for this reason that Santa Clause exists today.

Unfortunately, this godly man has been lost now to the conglomerate “Santa Claus” that exists because of Clement Clarke Moore’s A Visit of St. Nicholas, (“Twas the night before Christmas… “) and an early 20th century Coca Cola advertising campaign. He has now been turned into something of the pagan figure of Christmas, a symbol (idol?) of American consumerist culture and often placed at odds with the Christian holy day that celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. Yet there is a growing sense in the church that if we actually recaptured the image of the true St. Nicholas, it may be for us a gateway of returning Christmas to its true meaning – love and good deeds done because of God’s gift of us in Christ.

You see, the real Santa Claus was born “Nicholas” on March 15, A.D. 270 in the village of Patara, which is on the southern coast of what is now Turkey. His parents were wealthy individuals who raised Nicholas to be a devout Christian, and his uncle was even a bishop. Nicholas’ parents tragically died in an epidemic while Nicholas was still quite young. Obeying Jesus’ words to “sell what you own and give the money to the poor,” Nicholas became convinced to use his whole inheritance to assist the needy, the sick, and the suffering. He dedicated his life to serving Christ and was made Bishop of the nearby city of Myra while still a young man.

Bishop Nicholas became known throughout the land for his generosity to those in need, his love for children, and his concern for sailors and ships. Under the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who ruthlessly persecuted Christians, Bishop Nicholas suffered for his faith, was exiled and imprisoned. After his release, Nicholas attended the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 called to settle major theological disputes in the church. Incidentally, he became very angry at the heretic Arius for denying the divinity of Jesus and even slapped him across the face at one point…yes, that’s what happens to jolly old St. Nicholas when you take the Christ out of Christmas.

Anyway, the bishops had him dismissed for this outburst. He was both divested as a bishop and imprisoned. In jail, one night not long after, he had a dream where Jesus and Mary appeared to him and placed the symbols of his office back upon him – his stole and his mitre (the pointy bishops hat). He was then recognized as a bishop once again. Although he was not at the Council for the completion of the Nicene Creed, he was a vigorous defender of the true faith as expressed in the Nicene Creed that we will recite together before celebrating the Eucharist on Christmas Eve.

Nicholas is most well-known for his generosity to the poor and oppressed. One story tells of how a father was forced to sell his daughters into slavery (and perhaps prostitution) because he could not afford to pay the dowry for them to be married. St. Nicholas secretly went on three separate nights and threw three bags of coins into the house to pay the dowries. One night, the coins were thrown down the chimney and landed in stockings that were drying by the fire (hence, the tradition of Santa bringing gifts down the chimney and placing Christmas stockings by the fire). On the last night, Nicholas was caught by the father, but the father was sworn to secrecy.

On another occasion, when making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Nicholas is said to have prayed during a storm that arose while he was at sea. The storm immediately ceased at his prayers, and Nicholas soon became known as a wonder-worker as well. He was also known as a person who cared for children. During times of famine, Nicholas used his money to provide food for starving children and their families. He did all these deeds, and many more, in secret, expecting nothing in return.

Apart from the deeds we know he did while living, legend tells us more. St. Nicholas supposedly saved a child who had been captured and taken into slavery, where he became the King’s cup bearer. St. Nicholas appeared in the middle of the night and lifted the boy and his cup, returning him to his parents. In France, the story is told of three small children who were playing and wandered off until they were lost. They were lured and captured by an evil butcher, who killed the boys. St. Nicholas happens to appear at the butcher’s shop and appeals to God to return them to life and to their families.

Nicholas died December 6, A.D. 343 in Myra and was buried in his cathedral church. The anniversary of his death became a day of celebration, St. Nicholas Day, December 6th. His connection to Christmas, therefore, has to do with the celebration of his feast in the midst of Advent.

I am quite an ardent admirer of Nicholas. His life has taught me the meaning of being a true shepherd and teacher to God’s people as a pastor, the importance of defending the faith, and the imperative to act in generosity toward those in need, especially children. In part it is Nicholas’ example, coupled with the teachings of the Holy Scriptures that inspired me to become a foster parent in recent months.

Nicholas teaches us the true meaning of Christmas. If there were ever a reason to recover the true St. Nicholas from the ways our culture has turned him into the idol of our consumerist lifestyle, it is that we might be better followers of Jesus Christ and teach that same faith to our children – just as Nicholas did. For Nicholas, the focus of this season was not the gifts he gave, but the greatest gift that God has given us – His only Son.

This advent as we prepare to celebrate Christmas when the Word of God took on flesh and became God’s great gift of love to the world, I hope you all, young and old alike, will come to admire this saint of the Christian faith. I hope that in hearing of his life and how it exemplifies the Holy Scriptures, we will be prepared not just to celebrate Christ’s first coming, but prepared for his second coming – not decked with tinsel and lights, food, presents, and all the holly jolly – but decked with charity and love, with good deeds, generosity, kindness, and compassionate justice for the under-privileged.

May God richly bless you and yours this Christmas season in the name of the one “who for us and for our salvation was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became truly human” – that is, Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord.

In Christ’s love and service,

Pastor Nathan

Thank you, Nathan And to all of you: “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

I’m currently having an experience that demonstrates, at least to me, why the folks who would like to repeal Obamacare — more correctly, the federal Affordable Care Act (emphasis on affordable) — are a little misguided in their thinking — maybe even a lot misguided — by partisan leaders who just might have other political agenda. (Ya think?)

This summer I was diagnosed with having atrial fibrillation, a disease of the heart’s electrical system that millions of people have, billions world-wide maybe, but that few people want to “just live with,” I think. I mean who wants to be a 73-year old — or younger, or older — person who feels pooped out most of the time? Plus, it’s pretty expensive to treat, I’m finding; not like the really awful stuff, I’m sure; but still, “pretty.”

For example, the statement of patient cost that my Medicare Advantage Plan health insurance company sends me online shows that the “billed” prices for a 30-day supply of the two new Afib medications I now take — and will have to take forever, I suppose, or at least until they don’t work anymore — are $301.64 (so the Afib doesn’t jar a clot loose, and I have a stroke) and $294.55 (so my heart’s rhythm will get back to normal — hopefully, possibly, maybe, but not certainly — and stay that way — hopefully, possibly, maybe, but who knows for how long).

That would be $596.19 per month for anyone not as fortunate as me and doesn’t have health insurance. Per year, it would be $7,154.28!

Holy hell! How could anyone who doesn’t have health insurance of some sort, whether Medicare, Medicaid, or something now mandated by the Affordable Care Act, ever get treated for something like Afib, let alone the big, truly terrible, and still largely mysterious stuff like MS and Parkinson’s disease?

The answer is he or she just couldn’t; he or she would just need to learn to live with it, which is bullshit because it doesn’t have to be that way. Obamacare is proving it.

Yesterday on the anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, I heard that 10 million Americans who didn’t have health insurance last year at this time now do because of the Affordable Care Act. Of course, some adjustments are needed to the Act. It isn’t perfect. Nothing is. But to repeal it or substantially change it would be grossly misguided, unreasonable, compassionless, unjust, and even unconstitutional, I think.

Mostly, it would be tragically unfair to the millions – yes, millions, many millions – of poor people in our country whose rights in these matters the Act was designed and adopted to protect. Maybe you don’t agree, but I believe that good health, if it can be had, is one of those “inalienable rights” the Constitution protects and is one of those “values” we Americans have held since initially we declared to help one another best we can by becoming “a more perfect union” best we can.

If we let the Affordable Care Act disappear or become greatly diminished in its effectiveness, then we’re no longer a people doing the best we can for all of our people, and we have become an increasingly “less perfect” union.

But I live in hope that won’t happen. Thanks for listening once again.

Thanks to all of you who have wished me happy birthday today.

Someone said I have three birthday wishes; so here they are:

• That the Pittsburgh Pirates will win tonight and go on to win the World Series;
• That, even though I’m distressed by the stupidity of the NFL and am being hypocritical, the Steelers will continue winning;
• A third that I’m thinking may be easier (than my first two wishes) to get done. Let me explain:

The Raleigh News & Observer reports this morning that a firearms advocacy group called “Grass Roots” is pushing for the recently enacted legislation permitting concealed weapons to be carried practically everywhere here in North Carolina to also apply to the up-coming state fair, which up until now has had a strict rule against firearms of any sort on the fairgrounds.

If the Grass Rooters have their way, which I suspect they will (it’s that kind of moment that we live in right now) and everyone can “pack and carry” as they like when the fair opens in a few weeks, here’s my third wish: that those of us who disagree with permitting guns, concealed or otherwise, at the state fair simply not go and let the world know, best we can, what that will mean.

It will mean, for one thing and maybe the most important thing, a considerable loss of potential revenue both for vendors at the fair and for the state, a considerable economic impact, in other words, the kind of thing legislators tend to pay attention to.

Think about it. If only 500 families or extended families (parents and grandparents taking the kids and grandkids) decided not to go, and those 500 families would have otherwise spent $250 each, say, on the outing, that would mean a loss of revenue of $125,000. If a thousand of us did it, it would mean $250,000, and so on. To be Dirksenesque (sic) about it: “Pretty soon we’re talking about real money”…and pretty soon people begin to pay attention…and pretty soon maybe things change.

Sure, it’s a boycott. But boycotts frequently work. And it’s a simple one. I’m not talking about petitions and signatures and all that stuff. I’m only wishing — birthday wishing — that if enough of you were to agree and decide not to go to the fair this year while also letting your friends, neighbors, and legislators know why (maybe by liking this on Facebook and sharing it with them?), we could begin to change some of the craziness.

Yes, I suppose the kids will squawk some when they find out they’re not going this year. But isn’t the kind of world they will inherit from us more important?

Thanks as always for listening.

— Bernie

Sixty years ago when I was a kid growing up in western Pennsylvania practically every boy played football, tackle football mostly, if not in an organized way (which only started in those days in junior high school at about age 13, incidentally) protected by helmets and padding and overseen by coaches, then in an unorganized way in our side yards and on the far north end of St. Anthony’s cemetery, which was yet to be “occupied” and still pretty much free of graves and tombstones.

We’d play without the protection of “football gear” usually, i.e. the cleat shoes; the shoulder, hip, thigh, and knee pads, jock straps, and uniforms; and the helmets, such as they were in those days, that the “organized” teams’ players wore. All that we wore were an old pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and our tennis shoes.

So there were injuries occasionally, some that may have been prevented by protective gear – things like skinned knees, thigh bruises, broken noses, black eyes and goose eggs on heads, for example – and some that would have happened (and still do) in spite of all the padding and protection we might have put on and all the supervised coaching we might have had – things like twisted knees, broken fingers and ankles, and the “concussions,” both recognized and unrecognized, that invariably occur when a head bangs violently into another head (or knee or elbow or foot…or the ground), and the brain bangs violently against the inside of the skull bone.

Even if we had had helmets on, our brains would have taken a beating, we now know. They would have because helmets, even the best, just can’t compensate (we also now are beginning to recognize) for the physical principle of inertia that causes the brain to smash into the skull when a head collides with something else.

And, in fact, I wonder if our brains might have taken an even worse beating if we had worn helmets. See, I have a hunch that when you play football, if you have a helmet on (which I never did until I got to high school) you also put on a false sense of security that now the helmet will protect you no matter what. You can now bang the guy across from you as hard as you can because it won’t hurt, not as much anyway, and he can’t hurt you…as much.

But now we know that’s wrong. Last night Alice and I watched the Frontline documentary League of Denial on PBS. My god! Notwithstanding the long and mean-spirited denial and opposition of the National Football League, neuroscientists at Boston University and elsewhere have documented that practically every professional football player in this country, except for place kickers and punters, perhaps, suffers or will suffer from CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), a horrible degenerative disease resulting from multiple concussions or jars to the head over time.

One of the BU researchers who examined the brains of some 55 deceased former NFL players has found that in 54 of the cases CTE was present. In addition, its presence has now been documented in college and high school age players as well.

Maybe, then, it’s time for us Americans to give up on football, at least as we’ve come to know and love it courtesy of the NFL (and NCAA, by the way). We’ve done it with boxing. When I was that kid 60 years ago, my dad would go with a friend to prizefights in Youngstown and New Castle fairly often, as I remember. And boxing was on network primetime television on Wednesday and Friday nights, I think.

But we’ve gotten beyond boxing. Now, most people – most of those who are the viewers who produce the television revenues anyway – understand boxing to be a violent sport that is bad for the brain. And we don’t like it or watch it as much anymore, cage fighting and kick-boxing that some networks still find profit in notwithstanding.

Maybe it’s time to also deep-six American football. Maybe we could begin to have as much fascination for and find profit in things like soccer or even rugby. At least in soccer and rugby the players (I want to think), who are without the helmets that may be lulling football players into feeling like they’re invincible, are a bit more conscious of the need to be careful of their heads.

Maybe the NFL and NCAA could just go each sit on a tack and let themselves deflate. Don’t worry; the NFL owners will be OK. They’re bright folks. They’ll find other ways to make their millions and billions. And as for the NCAA, well, maybe then our colleges and universities could get back to what they’re really supposed to be about.

Also, we’d be OK, I’m pretty sure. We’d find other places to place our loyalties and passions, maybe even places that will be better for us as a society in the long run. Don’t you think?

I had my first “Moral Monday” hearing today. I had been arrested on June 10th in Raleigh along with some 80 or so others – and 800 or so more, over the summer — after refusing to “disburse on command of an officer” and violating “the Legislative Building rules.”

It went well – well enough, anyway – and Alice and I were both impressed…both with how well organized the system of criminal justice is in North Carolina and with how tedious it is and expensive it must be.

I mean, as we entered the spanking new Wake County Criminal Justice Building on Salisbury St. at 8:40 or so this morning there were already two long lines of people (mostly “defendants” of one sort or another, I think) queued and waiting to get through security. Then, as we entered the also-impressive granite and steel lobby, there were airport-like monitors above our heads scrolling our names and telling us which courtroom we were assigned to. I went to C203 along with a hundred or so other “arrestees,” only four of which, best I could tell, were also Moral Monday violators. Most were there for other reasons, ranging from traffic citations to “assault and battery” to “impersonating an officer.” And one guy was ushered in by a side door with an orange and white prison jump suit on.

Imagine! There were eight other courtrooms with the same sort of thing going on, and it goes on, I was told, five days a week, week after week. That’s just in little, old Raleigh. Imagine what it must be like in the really big places…Charlotte, Houston, LA, and NYC. We goody two-shoes country Presbyterians – except for those among us who are police officers or defense attorneys or otherwise work in the criminal justice system – just have no idea!

But I digress; back to “my” issue, the Moral Mondays thing.

The kind, generous, and wise attorney who is representing a bunch of us “pro bono” – Greg Doucette of Raleigh who was arranged for by the NAACP – reminds us that, in the interest of moving things along and recouping at least some of the cost of all this, the Wake County district attorney has proposed a “plea bargain” of sorts: 25 hours of community service (at any 501-c3 not-for-profit organization, which means churches and the Orange Community Players both qualify), court costs in the amount of $180, and no more criminal offenses, in exchange for having no criminal record of any sort.

The alternative, Attorney Doucette says, and in the event I’m interested in defending my 1st Amendment right to free speech, is to move forward to trial, which would mean appearances before “the court” every month for many months while, each time, the case is “continued.”

But I’m not interested in defending my right to free speech and to assemble, sing, and make noise in the lobby of the state legislature building. (The acoustics in there are fabulous, incidentally.) Hell, the freedom to speak and make noise, like everything else, has limits. Otherwise, we’d have chaos and anarchy.

I knew going in on June 10 that I would be violating a necessary law and would likely be arrested. But my purpose wasn’t to break a law or to speak freely; rather it was to help call attention, via the media in our great country, to the terrible injustices that are occurring in our state because of the actions of the legislature and governor, enough attention to get them voted out ASAP and get back to sanity around here.

I think we’re getting it done…hoping, at least. I’m happy to have helped a bit, and I’m willing to pay the pretty nominal price.

I’m sorry to report that kind, faithful, and loving Jesse, the mostly golden rescue lab that Alice’s daughter Gretchen and her family in Chapel Hill have had for about 15 years, had to be put to sleep this afternoon.

Gretchen had called this morning to say they had found him unable to stand and breathing with difficulty a half-hour or so earlier, and she and Rob were about to take him to a nearby veterinary urgent care facility. It appeared he had suffered a stroke resulting, most likely, from the rupture of an internal tumor that their vet had diagnosed some months ago.

Thus, it wasn’t a complete surprise — at least for Gretchen, Rob, Alice, or me — that Jesse suddenly became ill. But surely it has been a shock for the kids – Jake, 10, and Lily and Finn, both 7. You see, for them, Jesse had always been part of the family, there when they were born and all along as they’ve grown: kind, gentle, dear old Jesse, long-enduring through all of the wonderfulness of happy and playful (and I mean really playful) children. There he was, taking it all in and enjoying every hopeful minute, I’m pretty certain.

So while there has been some preparation for what now has happened, at least for us adults; still, it’s hard, I’m finding. And I’m in need of my Resurrection faith and theology helping me, which they are. See, while some may say that my faith and theology have dissipated, or gone more to sugar, over the years, to me they have sharpened.

I now absolutely believe the Resurrection includes all Creation and all things and beings in it, human and otherwise. Our “glad heavenly reunion” will include one another and all whom we have ever loved, including Jesse. We will all be absolutely without all of the warts, blemishes, and frailties that have kept us separate from one another to some degree in this lifetime. And Jesse will be at the peak of his energy and loveliness, and without (forever without) the damned internal and external tumors that troubled him and finally did him in, in this dispensation.

Jesse, I believe, will also be at the great banquet table in the eternal kingdom (or monarchy, or nation, or “place,” or whatever the hell else you want to call it). In fact he’ll likely be under the table, as he’s always been, because dogs won’t be able easily to sit in chairs there either. He’ll be there, just like you and me, waiting patiently for another morsel of joy to come his way. And I’ll see him again, fully fit, firm, kind and faithful.

Being arrested at the state capitol in Raleigh yesterday evening and then transported and “processed” at the Wake County jail was a kind of circular experience for me – at several levels, as I think about it.

First, the 84 of us who were kindly and professionally handcuffed and hauled off from yesterday’s sixth Moral Monday demonstration had it happen to us in the circular rotunda outside the chambers of the General Assembly, a place that has magnificent acoustics, incidentally, which helped our singing of the great hymns and freedom songs of the Civil Rights era and helped me circle back emotionally to the 1960’s.

I never got arrested back then as a result of any of my protestations in support of either civil rights or an end to the war in Vietnam but came close (I guess I did; I don’t know for sure) when Fred Wood and I led (led, only because I was the tallest guy in the group and Fred had a great beard) a big group of students and faculty from Pittsburgh Seminary, Pitt, Carnegie-Mellon (Carnegie Tech, at the time), and elsewhere on a march from East Liberty to Frick Park in Oakland in the fall of 1964, in sympathy with civil rights marchers in the South who were risking a whole lot more than we were. We didn’t get arrested, but we did get cursed and spat upon, and the Pittsburgh city police acted fully professionally and kept complete order, as did the NC General Assembly and City of Raleigh police last night. So my mind circled back.

Second, there was a concentric-but-narrower circular emotion for me. Last October, Alice and I did door-to-door voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigning in rural neighborhoods here in northwestern Orange County, where we live. The level of poverty that we saw was surprising to us since Orange County, which includes Chapel Hill and Hillsborough, is the wealthiest county, per capita, in the state.

In one instance, the poverty was downright shocking and frightening. One of the homes we were assigned to visit that afternoon was perhaps the most dilapidated-but-still-occupied house I have ever seen. It was a two-story farm house occupied now by an elderly African American woman and her even more elderly disabled husband on property inherited from ancestors who had been freed from slavery by their owners and given the small farm just before the Civil War.

As we pulled into the lane leading up to the house, we could see the glass was broken out of the windows on both stories at one end, and the front porch and porch roof had fallen-in at that end. At the other end of the home, the kitchen end, a newer deck and wheelchair ramp had been constructed by one of the elderly couple’s children so that her husband could more easily get in and out of the house when he had to be taken to medical appointments.

It was the Sunday before Election Day, and when I knocked at the kitchen door for the purpose of arranging rides for them to their polling place on Tuesday, the kind and gentle woman who answered said that wouldn’t be necessary; her daughter would be taking her and her husband had voted earlier by mail.

Yesterday afternoon as we stood on the Bicentennial Mall lawn and listened to a number of super-eloquent speakers from the NAACP and elsewhere make the case for the Moral Mondays movement (which this week will be expanded to include Wednesdays as well from here on, I’m told), my mind circled back to that October conversation.

Among the absurdities that the Legislature is seriously considering in order to make up the for the financial loss it will suffer by being one of the 12 states refusing to be a willing partner in the federal Affordable Health Care plan, i.e., “Obamacare,” is to add groceries to the sales tax list here. Which means: the elderly woman we met that day and her husband, whose refrigerator and pantry are stocked pretty minimally, I’m pretty sure, will be taxed even more heavily while another proposal the legislature is also considering will lower the state income tax rate for the wealthiest North Carolinians.

All of it in the interest of “fairness” and of “fiscal responsibility,” they say!

Huh? That’s crazy-talk, as is the proposal in this very same legislative session to require people to show official identification, which is to say, a driver’s license, when they show up to vote. Neither the woman we met that Sunday afternoon last October nor her husband has had a driver’s licenses or owned a vehicle in years. Nor, I suspect, will they be easily able to provide alternative “proof” that they live at the same Orange County, NC address where one of them has lived all her life, that her ancestors go further back in this country than those of most of the rest of us, and that they both have the right to vote now – the “right” that was hard won for them only in the 1960’s, sad to say.

So, life and memory are circular, I guess, at least kind of, which maybe was what led me to decide to join the folks moving “illegally” into the capitol rotunda last night. (Officially, we were gently and professionally arrested for “failure to disburse on command,” “second degree trespass,” and “violation of legislative building.)

Then again, life and history really aren’t circular, and we aren’t bound always to repeat ourselves. Rather, history is more funnel-like (an apt metaphor when there were also tornadoes in the area last night, they tell me). We do go around in circles, but we also move forward and upward at the same time. (Teilhard de Chardin?)

Which gives me confidence that things can change and will. Things really aren’t the same as they were in the 1960’s…or even just last year…or even just yesterday, for that matter. Are they? Not even legislatures with all their blustering crazy talk will hold things back — which probably is why Alice and I will go back next Monday (and maybe even tomorrow) to support and applaud other folks who are also willing to be handcuffed but not stopped from moving forward…ever. It’s not much of a risk and probably a good investment.