The Day After

 

The Day After

 It has been more than a month since the US presidential election, and I am still very disappointed in America.  I am struggling to understand how a person could vote for a person who holds the racist, anti-life, anti-human rights, earth destroying ideas and policies that are pushed by DT.  Before the election I thought that people were being misled by the lies, fear mongering and us-versus-them language.  Today, I am not sure, and it makes me very sad.  Having to forgive, I have to believe that the good people that voted for DT were temporarily misled.  Everything becomes known in time.  People who actually support the sinful policies can be dealt with by God, “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.”  Holy Mary, Magnificat.

It seems most human beings are willing to take an easy answer given to them and more than willing to blame someone else or some other group for life’s challenges.  History repeats itself and it seems that people will still follow a false leader.  When Moses led the Hebrew people from Egypt, instead of following God, they followed false leaders and a golden calf.  Today, America is following a golden tower and toilet embodied in a person who paints himself gold.

I believe that I have deceived myself in thinking that there can be a governmental movement to bring about just policies.  No doubt that as a Christian we must work for justice and for peace and for a government that is both, when possible, but it is not the end.  I believe I need to get back to Peter Maurin’s idea of building a new within the shell of the old, and Dorothy Day’s idea of unbending to anything except Jesus’s message of justice, peace and service to others. 

When I think back to my roots, the Catholic Worker movement, my family and my friends I remind myself that I am used to being in the minority and part of the resistance.  For over 40 years I have been trying to be faithful to social justice, participating in the Catholic Worker, being threatened by the KKK in Alabama, sitting in and put in jail for resisting the threatened invasion of Nicaragua, participating in peacemakers, military tax conscientious objection over nuclear arms, Central America underground railroad, working with grassroots groups on environmental issues in the Appalachia coal fields, stopping a nuclear waste dump in Illinois, working to empower people in Haiti for a just and healthy society, supporting common sense gun regulations and immigration rights.  I will be continuing whatever work and resistance is needed to support a just, peaceful, and healthy environment and planet, for as long as I can, God willing and by the grace of God.

 

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