Through Faith and Patience

I would like to remind my fellow-Christians, we serve  a Savior who did not insist, nor fight for, nor allow his right-hand man to fight for, his constitutional rights.

Rather, he bore the punishment of a cruel civil .gov backed up by a band of religious zealots.

Jesus Christ did not argue with Herod, nor Pilate, nor Caiaphas. He already knew that his ultimate victory was assured, because. . . while allowing their bloody conspiracy to totally defeat his body, they were unknowingly setting the historical stage for the greatest human victory of all time—our triumph over death itself.

His world-class demonstration of how to prevail over adversity advances the purposes of God on this earth.

He did not nit-pick about his right to gather on Sunday or maintain any semblance of religion. In fact, on one occasion he ran the religious folks out of their temple.

He was telling them to get their priorities straight.

His most ardent spokesman later reminded us, through a written legacy, that  faith and patience would be the basis of our inheritance.

Not the promises of man . . . nor our legal right to get together on any particular day and play church. while the rest of the world is engaged in a life/death struggle.

We now have in the world a life-and-death situation that will ultimately demonstrate, like Jesus’s own ordeal, the power of our God to deliver us from evil, amen.

So let’s not cloud the issue by trying to split hairs over traditional religious whoodoos like what they think about what we can or not do on Sunday.

They cannot defeat us. 

They can’t defeat the ongoing presence the risen Messiah in this world. His greatest life-affirming act was remaining obedient unto death . . . a death that erupted as Resurrection and changed the world forever. He was a man unjustly executed, but then he lived to tell about it.

And get this: they will never defeat his followers.

His victory was a world-changing event that greatly outweighs our power to quibble over freedom of assembly issues during a life-threatening pandemic.

My dear brothers and sisters, they cannot beat us. That’s been tried already, multiple times through multiple ages.

But they can still join us.

You can’t beat down a man who survives death.

King of Soul

What we have Learned

(If you prefer to hear spoken word, listen on this mp3:)

What we have Learned

Now we are engaged in a great covid war, testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great media platform of that war. We have come to protect our institutions—our medical facilities and places of commerce, our recreational spaces and houses of worship, our business enterprises and residences—to assure our citizens of safety in their public paths through these gathering places. Those whose lives have already fallen under the infection of covid shall not have died in vain. Rather, let their untimely demise serve as a warning to us who remain. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

Nevertheless, as we approach the end of Phase 1 of our long battle against covid, we find ourselves at a crossroads where some among us would persevere in their advocacy of dire measures to lockdown our mobile inclinations, while others of our citizenry would  demand release from them.

Yet . . .it remains for us the living, surely, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work through which these fallen do testify, by their very absence, of our need to persevere in the battle to defeat Covid-19.

The challenge ahead indicates a full-court press to oppose us— in the fateful minutes of the second half of our struggle against a teeming virus that dribbles feverishly against our most fervid defense.

At this critical moment of our offensive thrust, we find victory in the whizzing of our great  object through the last net of infection.

Thus do we celebrate the 3-pointer which, we hope and pray, shall be celebrated as our game-winner:

~ Six feet Apart—or Six feet Under!

~ Grab the Soap—Don’t be a Dope!

~ No need to Ask—Wear the Mask!

And I lay before thee  the great challenge before us in  such a time as this:

Whether by .gov compulsion, or by personal conviction,  shall we—shall we who are scattered like precious seed in the winds of time —shall we shrink from the dear prospect of adopting—whether voluntarily or by compulsion during these perilous days— these simple habits as a matter of common sense and common courtesy?

Nay, I say, nay, we shall not shrink from the task before us!

Send us your tired, your weary, your socially distanced yearning to be healed, so that healing of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth!

Glass half-Full

Say it ain’t So.

These are perilous times in many ways:

Perilous pandemic

Perilous politics

Perilous protests

Perilous proclamations

Perilous pandemonium

Perilous publications

Perilous panic

Perilous parlance

Perilous pathogens

Perilous politicians

Perilous partisans

Perilous Powers

I heard a perilous report this morning. I found myself wishing some wise person would or could refute the perilous parlance I heard.

I was thinking: Say it ain’t so!

~Say it ain’t so: that the CCP are out to get us.

~Say it ain’t so: that the CCP unleashed the perilous pandemic with intentions of debilitating the US.

~Say it ain’t so: that the CCP place no value in human life.

~Say it ain’t so: that the CCP leaders are willing to sacrifice large swathes of their own people to the Covid just for the sake of having an alibi.

~Say it ain’t so: that the CCP want to dispose of many of their own old people because they’ve got too many of them due to their past one-child policy.

~Say it ain’t so: that Xi’s heroes are Hitler and Stalin.

Say it ain’t so!

~Say it ain’t so: that the CCP are willing to make a deal with Perilous Putin to debilitate North America with Covid and then divvy it up so that Ruskies can have Alaska back and CCP can grab USA to repopulate it with their presently overpopulated people.

Say it ain’t so!

~Say it ain’t so: that we actually have Americans who claim that our nuclear arsenal is obsolete and needs to be upgraded.

Say it ain’t so!

~Say it ain’t so: that any leader would even think about firing one of those damned warheads.

~Say it ain’t so: that we are headed for another world war.

Somebody please say it ain’t so.

Somebody please prove to me that all the above Perilous Reports are not true and they  could never happen.

More likely, however, than someone actually proving that to me is:

that I would do better to put aside this perilous rant and resort instead to a different “P” plea to hang my hopes on:   

Pray!

Pray it ain’t so.

Perhaps you’ll join me. Pause for a word of Prayer for all People everywhere and for the imperiled Planet we inhabit.

P.S. If you are Chinese, and reading this . . . Please don’t take this wrong way.

Have a nice day.

Glass half-Full

Time for Covidic Database

Just looking around, I notice we’re in an information age.

Everywhere you look there’s info.

The info gets stored and horded and whored in e-bundles to be harvested by humans and their bot-slaves. Then the info becomes digitally transformed into  a magic thing called data.

Now everywhere you go online, or off, there’s  a data trail that is tucked away somewhere in vast e-storage bins. Those gigabytes reside interminably in quiet isolation, until the gigs and megs are retrieved  by a dutifully wonkish  techie or faceless bot for various purposes:

Some purposes good, some bad. It’s all out there somewhere.

The system wants to serve you; the system wants to screw you. Its two sides of a digital coin or crypto coin or a capitalist dream or a socialist nightmare. Maybe its your best friend and maybe its your worst enemy.

We’ve learned that the powers-that-be open some mystical flood gates of that Big River of Idolic Desire. The powers  dangle desirable stuff and images of desirable people in front of your eyes so you’ll buy stuff you think you need to be like them, and by so doing you make yourself contented while  keeping the corporate ogres fat n happy as you become fat n happy like them.

Now many of us have begun to to discern that the data mining environment that we’ve surrounded ourselves with is corruptive.

Then Whammo!

Suddenly we have a worldwide disease that corners us into making judgements about what we must or should do to collectively  strike the disease down, or permit it to continue running rampant across our nation and the world.

Some data you know about; you can figure out what the social media operators are doing behind the scenes; other data is hidden. They say data is being gathered about you all the time in everything you do, and it is controversial because you don’t even know what it is that the wizards of data are putting together right now as we speak about you and yours and your habits and your travels and your social interactions and your blah blah blah and who cares about your stuff anyway. Maybe your mother cares about your stuff, or your boss or your partner or Boomchokka Analytica.

I don’t care about your data, although I am writing about it now in a matter-of-fact way because it does constitute a chunk of megabytes somewhere on that mega database in the sky or wherever the hell it is. You may get a call about it some time from Big Brother, although I doubt that because he likes to keep a low profile.

But I regress. As I was sayin’. . .everywhere you look, data this and data that. Database this and database that. Who cares?

Well now we’ve just found out that everybody needs to know about your stuff because of the damned coronavirus.

I mean, they don’t actually need to know about all your data stuff just . . .

whether you test positive for the COVID-19.

It’s just that simple, but now it happens to be a matter of life and death, not just a question of how much money some corporate entity can make off you.

We need to put together a database, you see, about the coronavirus so the professional health people and the doctors and the epidemiologists and the patholgists and the DHHS can make informed decisions about the best way to drive this damned disease back into the ground, instead of it floating around in droplets and vapors amongst the shoppers and the meat-cutters and the hair stylists and the movie ticket-takers and whoever else is trying to keep you satisfied while themselves  making a living in a public place in this here United States of America.

And furthermore, as it turns out now in this life and death situation of Covidic ruin, that mega database in the sky needs to get some real facts about how many deceased have actually met their demise because of Covid—not because of some other disease.

I just hope that the data-geeks can pull all this stuff together in a useful way without generating a hornet’s nest of privacy doowop flipflops.

We need to get some of these statistics straightened out so that discontented folks with gun-totin’ public tantrums can’t get out there in the public square and confuse uninformed citizens about how many folks actually died of  Covid and how many died of some other causes.

Just the facts—that’s what we need now. Read ‘em and weep.

Therefore we could theoretically make good use a Covid-infection database, so statisticians can project accurately and responsibly about how many people will likely catch the disease in the days and months ahead. . .

and to what extent public and commercial spaces ought to be opened up and made available again for common use so we can move  reasonably, safely beyond the socially-distanced construct under which we presently strain.

You see, just now when we are, as a human race, aspiring to survive and prosper on this planet in spite of the Covid destruction, we now hear reports of protests bustin’ out in the town squares and on the net, exerting pressure on whoever’s in charge to renew the openings and operation of this, that, or the other business, because so-and-so is fed up with the lockdown and Billy Jo is tired of the social distancing and Peggy Sue wants to get her hair done and Arnold wants to go work out in the gym and blah blah blah and mainly . . .

People want to get back to work.

We can understand that.

But We find ourselves in a nationwide conundrum because so many folk are getting  stir-crazy and they wanna push the envelope while others are goody-to-shoes politically correct and wanna play by the rules when we don’t have any rules yet about whether the covid numbers are political hype to impose political control on the clueless masses, or. . .

prudent practice for the defeating of Covid. . .

whichever the case may be.

But really, this whole big baileywick comes down to answering this very important question:

Who has the Covid-19 inside of them? and

Who has not?

So it makes sense (does it not?) to test everybody.

A testing campaign on a national scale and beyond, on a world scale, would not only provide a workable database for informed decision-making by medical doctors and pandemic-preventers but also

such a project as this would generate a whole lot of new employment opportunities for a lot of people. . . especially

Good training for new trainees in the profession of public health. They may be battling this disease for a long time. . . long after I’m dead and gone after 68 years of watching this amazing world cruise by.

Public health becomes more and more of a problem to-be-solved, as covid creeps through the mire of our excessive abuses and misuses.

A reliable Covid database would become an expanding industry during this time of suddenly massive unemployment.

It would require lots of people to be hired to gather information about who got infected and who did not. . . who died of the covid disease and who died of some other dysfunction.

We need to know.

So Get tested soon.

It’s your patriotic duty.

It’s that simple: get tested for Covid. Then we can get on with our lives.

Glass half-Full

Spring in my Step

Spring rolled down into the blue ridge today

blastin all our covid cares away;

she rolled in like a queen

with corona crown of royal green.

I be strollin’ now out in the sunshine

glad to leave them Febs ’n March behind

out walkin on the greenway trail

these bloomin’ good vibes cannot fail

cuz aint no covid ’strictions now gonna crimp my gait

no not today my April blues were worth the wait.

With my pocket miracle transistor radio

I be striding in sunshine and sayin’ hello.

 

But lemme tell you ‘bout this tune that really makes me lose

them covid crimps and those wintry blues:

the wonder of wonders is that Motown sound

bustin outa deep dark Detroit as I walk around

keepin’ perfect time with my springtime stride;

Yea! now it’s time to take a ride!

down memory lane with my lifeline bride

cuz she was surely My Girl back in the day;

yet she’s my lifetime woman still today,

and though she be now in ICU as a nurse

her love strolls beside me just like at first.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCcNcHx2DpY

 

Glass half-Full

Liberty or. . . Death by Covid?

Some people have to work for a living.

This reality does not just go away. In the next few months, we will see every shade of compliance and non-compliance with pandemic prohibitions and practices.

In a free nation, we should get used to the fact that not everyone is in agreement about strategies to strike a balance between defeating Covid and preventing a new epidemic of poverty.

Remember too, strategies vary, state by state. It just so happens that the New York Covid epicenter is also the media capital of this continent. Stringent restrictions for defeating Covid have been admirably initiated and administered by Gov. Cuomo in New York State. Media mouths and talking heads headquartered in the Northeast reflect the urgency of that region’s life-or-death struggle with coronavirus.

New York — especially the City — is a special case due to the extreme density of population there and the widespread use of mass transit.

In other states, however, especially southern states in which mass transit is not as highly developed, population is more widely spread out. There is far more space already existing between people, towns, suburbs, institutions, retail outlets, public parks, etc. Governors in these states, including many in the west and southwest, will have— regarding their policy responses and timetable — more flexibility in their judgements. Every Governor, every public official is now involuntarily sucked into an unprecedented, massive public problem: how to balance public policies to accomplish the defeat of Covid vs. preserving what is left of economic viability.

The immensity of this epidemic’s destruction is unprecedented in the history of our nation . . . except perhaps the dire destruction and loss of life of the Civil War, and the 1918 wartime war against a flu epidemic.

Official responses in states with low population density will not be as extremely restrictive as in high-density states; nor will such prohibitions extend as far into the months ahead. Balancing Covid-control against this unexpected 1930’s-ish poverty wave will be no walk in the park. Our entire nation–indeed the whole world–has been blindsided by this epidemic.

As Governors and other officials respond according to their states’ respective needs, so will the citizens therein be reacting in a wide variety of strategies,with some citizens acting much more cooperatively in the public space than others.

Many Americans still take quite seriously the words of Patrick Henry in 1775:

“Give me liberty or give me death.”

Liberty does not come cheaply. The cost is dear.  Back in the day. . . 1970ff, Crosby Stills Nash Young Gilmour sang out a dirgeful reflection of just what this life comes down to. . .

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-Y0SMitMpk

“Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground.”

Do not expect all the citizens of this free nation to agree on all the strategies for controlling Covid while preserving freedom. Many will die, but many will not. The best you can do is be an example in wearing your PPE and mask while ardently exhorting others to do so, for as long as this damned disease requires.

Let’s not forget, though, that freedom of assembly is a Constitutional right. Public declarations in that realm are not too be taken lightly. Ultimately such restrictions are subject to the 1st Amendment assurance of our shared liberty.

So don’t expect that all Americans will agree with the myriad of public prohibitions and practices that are provoked by the spread of this disease; do expect that you will hear about, read about, and surely encounter in public places . . . unmasked citizens who are not wearing the politically correct mask and/or PPE. Pshaw! on them.

Also, get used to the fact that our showman President is clueless when it comes to speaking publicly about this very large problem. In his public persona, the man is too obsessed with interpreting every development in terms of whether those persons are for him or against him. If you don’t like what he does, vote for Joe.

As for me, I don’t care who is President next year. I care about defending my family and our households against this disease, while upholding the freedoms we are entitled to as Americans.

We sincerely hope that whatever measures our President initiates, implements, advocates  . . . will effectively reinforce the efforts and precautions undertaken by all Americans to slap this dreaded disease back down into the ground.

Lean on your state .gov and local officials for guidance.

As for me and mine (my ICU nurse wife). . . we wear the mask and use hand sanitizer while visiting enclosed places in our Appalachian town.

And remember: not every masked person you meet is a bandit.

Glass Chimera 

Turn to your Governor

What we need now is: 

50 working Governors. . . each one taking charge of their respective domains.

And those same Governors must agree—while leaving polarized party politics in the dust of social media mass confusion—to solve the problems, small and large, as they arise — in each state. 

Each state is unique, with its own factor of population density, and its own percentage of citizens whose jobs depend on travel (potentially spreading the disease), and its own ratio of citizens who can actually “work at home” instead of having to “go to work” in the morning.

Governors taking charge — this is the true “federal” of federalism. The .gov in Washington — the so-called Federal government — must function, in this pandemic emergency, as a resource for the various states, as they are better equipped to solve their own problems.

But they do need — and will need for a long time — help from the national .gov, the chief executive of which is Donald Trump.

We need this strategy because each Governor is closer to the ground . . .

 “the ground” being a metaphor for . . .

 that  unique strategy policy required for the recovery of his/her own state, for which he/she has been elected to govern and protect. . .

To govern and protect, by: 

~ defeating Covid, according to the unique vulnerabilities of that state’s population distribution and demographics.

~ replenishing the economic opportunities and needs as an appropriate response for the unique conditions in that State, coordinating with mayors.

Eventually,

Each Governor will be accountable to the citizens of their own state, as citizens express, in the next election,  their appreciation or disapproval of that governor’s proficiency in responding to the Covid challenge of 2020.

The Governors need to get together and corner Trump into being their resourceful servant, instead of the other way around.

 

Glass half-Full

Ironic: Unity requires Separation

This is the great irony of our present pandemic situation: Unity of purpose compels us to stay apart.

How you appreciate that unity of mission is probably related to your social identity.

The old argument about progressive vs. conservative congeals now around our present controversy over individual movement vs. lockdown.

What this writer has noticed is:

Progressive citizens seem to be enthralled by the newfound collective purpose of defeating Covid.

Conservatives generally want to do whatever is necessary, but they emphasize individual responsibility, preferring  to minimize official restrictions on public behavior.

In public space, we find that collective obedience gets confronted with rugged individualism.

The respective advocates of each strategy ought to honor each other’s choice as compliantly as possible. Be a team player!

In the months ahead, we shall see how this all plays out.

The speed of Covid-spread seems to be directly proportional to these two factors:

~ Density of people

~ Travel

The disease spreads rapidly in large cities where millions of people are perpetually coming and going somewhere.

The disease spreads farther afield whenever any infected person travels from one place  to any other place.

Urban populations should be required, appropriately, to minimize their movements as mandated by official restrictions.

In small town and rural populations, responsible citizens should make themselves informed of guidelines issued by local officials.

As for those citizens who who have reason to travel between areas of high and low population density—your safest–and more responsible behavior– would require you to retain the standards of whichever travel destination has the more restrictive standards.

In other buzz:

Progressives say Trump’s antics are evidence of creeping Authoritarianism.

Conservatives say lockdowns and social distancing are creeping Socialism.

This Moderate recommends, regarding whomever you may encounter:

Be respectful.

Act responsibly.

Keep your distance.

Protect children.

Love your husband.

Love your wife.

Call your mother.

+ a Word of advice for all you unattached citizens:  this is probably a good time to cease random hook-ups.

 

Glass half-Full

Prine’s Paradise Demise

My old friend Terry, fellow baby boomer, called me the other day; he had a few things on his mind concerning the state of the world and so forth.

One very recent development that my friend was wondering about was the death of singer/songwriter John Prine. Terry was not so much surprised or alarmed at the death of the low-profile, though legendary, songwriter, because death happens to each one of us eventually anyway.

What perplexed my old singing buddy was how the obituary had captured the attention of the mainstream media.

“Mainstream media”. . . I hesitate to use that term, because, in our lifetime, the popular understanding of that term has changed.

When we growing up in the 1950’s-60’s etc. . .the mainstream media was thought to be, generally, the big three TV networks—CBS, NBC, ABC, along with the big heavyweights in print, the Times, the Post, the Journal etcetera etcetera.

As our lifetime got played out, the internet eventually eclipsed those old-school news sources. Replacing the former “mainstream media”, along came the heavyhitters that we all know today: Google, Facebook, etc etc, accompanied by a select few quasi-traditional TV networks—CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and of course the big kid on the blog for wonky elites, progressives and Democrats—NPR.

So last week, suddenly John Prine tributes were all over NPR et al with wide-eared wonder at the obscure songwriter’s profundity and prolific legacy, even though ole John had never hit the big time.

The biggies pretty much ignored the singer while he was alive; but when he died, several of them were, for a few days, all about John Prine this and John Prine that.

My friend Terry was perplexed why there would be so much media stir about Prine when they had previously not paid much attention to him. In other words, what’s the big deal about John Prine dieing?

I was wondering the same. Over the last few days, I have pondered what could be the explanation for this development, and I have figured it out.

My theory is this:

John Prine was prophetic. His song, Paradise, represents a profound foretelling of an isolated event that became—because of Prine’s song—a symbol of our present worldwide irresponsible destruction of the natural world.

To employ an academic description: the industrial destruction of one specific site—Paradise, Kentucky— is a microcosm; it  represents on a small scale what later happened (and had been already happening) in a worldwide plundering of natural resources at the terrible expense of our naturally beautiful planet.

What intensified the significance of the Muhlenberg County destruction was this fact: “Mr. Peabody’s coal train (that) hauled it away” was rapaciously extracting vast shovel-fulls of COAL, which has become the #1 villain on the Unwanted List of climate change alarmists.

Last week, in the wake of John Prine’s demise, many progressive commentators in the NPR et al vein of mainstream media suddenly realized—because of their youthful listening to Prine—the prophetic significance of this one song. So they began to talk it up.

As far as the song goes . . . it is a historic, lamenting composition. . . in my opinion one of the great songs of the American folk legacy.

You are invited to listen to my rendering of the tune:

     http://www.micahrowland.com/carey/PrineParadise.mp3

 

King of Soul

I’m Convinced

There’s a lot be said, and much to be written, about how we got here, where we are headed, what we will endure, what we will enjoy, and why it all happens.

Of all the sages and great men and great women throughout the ages, I do  not know of one whose claim to truth—whose claim to know what he is talking about, and what our purpose is here— I do not know of one whose accomplishment can be more convincing than the prophet  who rose from the dead. There is not one man nor woman whose wisdom or feats can match  this one miraculous labor of love:

Being tortured to death, rising from death back into life, and then living to tell about it.

There is no treatise on truth, no explanation of existence nor spoken lecture on the meaning (or absence thereof) of life. There is no heroic feat, no dramatic rescue, no profound work of art—that can match or exceed personal victory over death itself.

So I’m going with the one who survived death: Jesus.

I’m not the only one. Take a look at history and you will see how many men, women and children have, over two thousand years, cast their lot in his direction.

Believe it, or not.

If you can’t agree with me now, just recall this testimony when you are, let’s say, one hour or one minute from your death. At that moment, consider carefully whether you will truly want to  reject the rescuing hand that is extended to you just after crossing . . .

Better yet: believe me now, that. . . that hand is gesturing for you now, because the gift of eternal life through faith is even more precious–and more lovingly beneficial to others– when it comes into full use during this present life of trouble, trial, and triumph.

King of Soul