Mike’s Rumblings 08-16-24

Faith Conversations

This is an audio version of Mike Murphy‘s Friday rumblings. This is a regular post on Facebook that I’ve turned into a podcast. I decided Mike’s words needed a wider audience. You may agree or disagree with what he says, but there is certainly much food for thought contained here. You can friend Mike on Facebook for the printed version or read it below

Rumblings 8.16.24

1. “Most young adults I know aren’t looking for a religion that answers all their questions, but rather a community of faith in which they feel safe to ask them.” ~ Rachel Held Evans

It’s not just young adults. It’s people in all age groups (including the ancient ones like me) who want to be respected and taken seriously even when they wonder aloud about something that their religious culture doesn’t want to talk about.

2. Rev. William Sloane Coffin once said that “there are three kinds of patriots – two bad, one good.

The bad ones are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics.

Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country, a reflection of God’s lover’s quarrel with all the world.”

By that definition, I’d like to consider myself a good patriot. I’m in a persistent and consistent lover’s quarrel with this country of ours. My fists are clenched at times and then the next thing I know my hands open wide enough to welcome all that is so good and beautiful.

To live as an uncritical lover or a loveless critic is a waste of a life. I want no part of it.

3. “… our two political parties are increasingly animated by two starkly different visions of the nation’s past and future: Is America a divinely ordained promised land for European Christians, or is America a pluralistic democracy where all stand on equal footing before the law? Most Americans embrace the latter but a desperate, defensive, mostly white Christian minority clings to the former.” ~ Robert P. Jones, “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy”

4. Ulysses S. Grant said: “If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.”

Well, he was pretty much on target. In short order, stupidity, blind ambition, white supremacy, and ignorance squelched patriotism and intelligence and found a dastardly travel companion named ‘Jim Crow’. That unleashed a torrent of laws, primarily in the Confederate states, intended to batter, bruise, marginalize and intimidate Black America and keep them in their place.

For decades after the Civil War and well into the 20th century, Jim Crow Laws and their offspring made it clear that there was a way to continue the ‘war between the states’ while all the while pretending it was over.

That war is still being fought and it shows up in all kinds of sordid ways. Many of the actions taken by states recently impact African Americans adversely. All the gerrymandering, the voting restrictions, reproductive rights legislation, and the banishment of books, have all attacked people of color in disproportionate ways.

There’s still “miles to travel before we sleep.”

5. “Everyone of us needs half an hour of prayer each day, except when we are busy – then we need an hour.” ~ Francis de Sales

For those of you who are truly busy, I recommend these free apps.

– Pray as You Go

– Hallow

– Lectio 365

Each helps connect busy people to God, through prayer.

6. I know people who work in the dark places in this world of ours. They’ve responded to a deep call of God, living simply and faithfully, without fanfare, amidst the poor and oppressed. They are a visible expression of light and hope and in return they are deeply blessed by those they love and serve.

I think all of us have a meaningful call of God beckoning us. It leads us most often not into arenas where there is great applause but rather great need. If we respond to that call with a ‘yes’, we’ll need to pray for the courage to take the next step. That response, that prayer, that step, just might define the rest of our lives and be the very thing that gives others hope.

7. My faith in ‘organized religion’ fluctuates. My faith in the true God they’re trying to codify and institutionalize stays pretty consistently high.

8. I’ve learned, over time, that I need to find ways to love those who inhabit a radically different moral universe than the one I favor. In their universe, absurdity trumps virtue and truth is considered to be absurd. So, finding common ground is tricky. Scripture tells me if “I seek, I will find.” In other words, keep trying.

9. Ya, he (you know who) said this.

“The crowd I drew on January 6 was bigger than those who gathered in 1963 to hear the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his famous I Have a Dream speech.”

It’s a lie.

Here’s the truth.

The bi-partisan House January 6 Committee pegged his crowd at 53,000 people, about one-fifth of the 250,000 estimated to be at King’s famous address from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The NAACP posted photos from both days and said of the crowd comparison: “Not only is his claim completely false, but here’s what is more important: “MLK’s speech was about democracy. His was about tearing it down.”

10. Life’s most critical journey is away from the facades and props that enable us to pretend we are what we’re really not and then to embark on a pilgrimage to discover who we really are.

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