Worldwide Stew

Go to Your Room

I suspect my Mom wasn’t the only parent who responded to her children’s loud disagreements and fighting by telling us to go to our rooms.

It was good advice. When we get caught up in fight (part of the fight, flight, faint network), the chemicals coursing through our bodies want to defend ourselves from fear of shame, embarrassment, and , occasionally, physical injury.

Often, the most mindful way of navigating our fear, anger, and doubt is to separate ourselves from the circumstances. This is especially true if we can learn to be aware of arousal. Awareness can be our Earkly Warning System! It gives us space to rewrite the story we’re telling ourselves. Usually, that’s the problem: the story that’s taken residence in our mind. They’re taking advantage of us. They don’t value my feelings. They always treat me this way.

And then they came for me

Pastor Martin Niemöller did what many Christians did when they saw the Third Reich systematically remove the rights of selected populations. Group by group, Hitler and his hinchmen took away the rights 1) of the press, 2) of educational institutions and their professors, 3) of races, 4) the mentally ill, 5) of dissidents, and of other groups.

Like all good religious people, he said nothing.

Then they came for him.

Gavin Newsome on the Trump Administration and Democracy

When I started Worldwide Stew, I intended the Blog area of the site to be generally positive in tone. I would reserve the Opinion area of the site for news and opinions about science, health, politics, and fun stuff.

And then we ended up with what can only be called a fascist Administration(Merriam-Webster definition at the link). At this point, the scaffolding that held up any form of democracy is quickly eroding, like hurricane-force winds along the shoreline.

Save Public Media

If you live in the United States and can read this text, it’s possible that you learned some reading on Sesame Street. As you got older, you might have watched an episode of the science program Nova. As an adult, you may have watched news programming on the Evening News Hour. While it is fair to say that PBS coverage does tend to lean left of center; unlike other network news, however, PBS makes a concerted effort to fairly cover multiple sides of the issues. For entertainment, you might have watched Downton Abbey. And, during emergencies, you would have had continual coverage. Moreover, you may also have listened to the radio presence of public media. These services are available to everyone, rich or poor. This even includes those who can’t afford cable, like those people whom we pay tiny sums of money to mow our lawns and replace our roofs.

Beliefs Worth Examining

What would your belief system - your religion and politics, for example - have to do to cause you to reject it? It’s a question for our ideology-driven times.

Decades ago I believed in almost every facet of the Christian Nationalist dream, including their beliefs about sexuality. I ignored the human experience, following ideology instead. Then, as a chaplain in training, I sat by a gay man who lost his partner moments before. His racking sobs revealed his overwhelming grief. Wait, I thought. He really loved his partner. This relationship wasn’t the perversion I was told it was. There was more love in that room than in my own “straight” marriage. It was love. Pure love. It was the beginning of the collapse of my walls of belief about human sexuality. My former beliefs still cast long shadows.