The Call--Do You Hear It?

There is a call upon us today. It comes from the forces of good within us and from outside us in the universe. You can say it’s God if you want to. Or you can say it is a force inside our human spirit, the stuff we were made of at our creation, which all the sacred texts of every religion say was, at our origin, good.

It is a call to basic decency, to common sense, to getting our heads out of the muck and breathing some fresh air and getting in touch with our goodness again.

We are stuck in the dirt, stuck down to our souls, filthy inside and out, stained with our own fears and prejudices and anger and hate. We have given in to our meanness and it has made us a nation of moral pygmies. Our wrath, our fuming oaths, our senseless petty fury—all of that is mountainous, a huge growing thing within us and it has left us with pint-sized virtues that are being more and more diminished by the day.

We are greedy and tacky and mean, nasty and spiteful and raging against each other, touchy and easily offended, silly and infantile in our actions and attitudes. And it has left us flippant and superficial and volatile.

And we feed all of this stuff in us daily and eventually the craziness comes out and if there are no limits to the foolishness of this dark mood in the country if it is all perfectly acceptable and cheered on by the dumb and the irrational and the heartless then we of course should not be shocked when people pick up weapons and shoot and maim and kill.

As one of Shakespeare’s characters says, “These violent delights have violent ends.”

We all make choices in life and sometimes our choices make us. And right now way too many of us have made the choice to enter into this small-mindedness that grips our nation, this angry offensive beastliness that keeps us buried in some kind of crude bloodthirsty savagery. Nearly everyone from our highest leaders—our presidential candidates, our religious leaders, bishops and Cardinals, evangelical big shots and self appointed moralists—have all stooped to live in the mud and bury themselves in this awfulness.

There is a call upon us today. This call, this cry, is deep within all of us and it is so vital to our survival. It is a call to stand up out of the dirt we are in and be more than we are now; to be human and decent and appropriate and respectful. It asks us to live in the places of ourselves that we know are right and healthy, peaceful and earnest, compassionate and loving.

It is calling us to get up out of this mire of selfishness and chintzy sleazy inhumanness and be our better selves, be the good Americans we know how to be, be caring and open-hearted and generous with one another.

It is a call filled with the innocence of children, a call covered in kindness, a call that appeals to our heart and soul, to the real substance of our humanity. It is saying: Stand up; be better; be a good American again.

I hear it. It is deep within me and I want to say yes to it.

If I had five minutes to evacuate--what would I take with me?

If I was told there was a bomb in my building and I had five minutes to evacuate my apartment I’d grab a grocery bag and quickly toss these items into it: 1. A photo of my grandparents, Mom and Pop and me, when I was 15 years old. I learned what love is made of from them. I learned what it is to be kissed on and hugged in arms so tender they felt like God’s arms. I discovered self worth from those two angels in human flesh. Of all the people in my life, they were the ones who made me feel I counted. Honestly, whatever capacity I have to love others came from them. 2. A sentimental, dog-eared, stars in the margin copy of Pat Conroy’s, “The Prince of Tides.” It is a book I have read three times and often return to for its wisdom. It is a harsh, profoundly tragic novel, the story of a family so broken and tortured by such flawed and wounded people that it is sometimes difficult to turn the next page. And yet it is the story of such Herculean courage and endurance that you want...

A Losing Strategy

OPINION PAGE (c) 2024 Timothy Moody The Republican strategy to mock and judge others has passed into some form of insatiable, all-devouring nastiness. It is so poisonous and contemptuous that it is now just evil. Republican Governor of Arkansas, Sara Huckabee Sanders, suggested to a crowd of Trump supporters Tuesday night that Kamala Harris can't be humble because she doesn't have any children of her own. When will Americans decide they don't want government leaders who are so arrogantly insensitive, as Sanders was, that they offend everyone? This crude, villainous rhetoric transcends political partisanship. It’s evil, dangerous, and insulting. The poet Ezra Pound’s brief lines are appropriate here, “Pull down your vanity, How mean your hates” To suggest that someone cannot be humble because they don't have children is not just a cheap political comment. It's an attack on a person’s humanity and worth. And that is now, and has been fo...

OPINION PAGE:

OPINION PAGE © 2024 Timothy Moody The apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump last Sunday afternoon at his Trump International Golf Club was foiled by the Secret Service. Details are still coming in about it, and it's not yet known why the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, apparently wanted to shoot Trump. The botched attempt was amateurish in every way, just as the one in July was by a kid 150 yards from Trump. Conspiracy theorists are having a field day. The former President is, of all things, blaming these attempts on his life with what he called the “violent rhetoric” of President Biden and VP Harris. Of course, that is absurd, especially coming from Trump, who has consistently been guilty of that very thing since he became president in 2016 and even before. His speeches, X posts, and comments on his Truth Social platform have been endlessly filled with threatening language and incitement to violence. He suggested those protest...

The Unclad Soul

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