Uncategorized – garygunderson Blog

Compound Extremes

*Spring morning light at the bottom of the Canyon by Bright Angel Creek.*

I have not walked the Himalayas but when the glacier collapsed, I had friends, students and pilgrims I feared were among the thousands dead. I have walked the canyons called Grand and slept with the phantoms of Bright Angels Creek. I can remember the morning light on the ragged cliffs even as I type. I have rested in prayer on Point Sublime high above the river.

And I have voted in every election since turning 18, proud to be among the citizens of an admired people, now as collapsed as any glacier, running as ugly as any flash flooded creek.

Ecologists speak of “compounding extremes” that acerbate and accelerate where unstable phenomenon collide. Warming oceans destabilize rain patterns, which compound the instability of what seems eternal, the roof of the world. It turns out those structures are fragile, not stable at all. They rose up quickly by geological time, but can begin to collapse in the breath like speed of a single human life.

Perhaps you are like me and wonder what to do in this wild unstable now.

The Fellows of the Leading Causes of Life Initiative have been thinking about this for quite some time captured in a small book a year ago, tuned to resilience and rebound beyond the collapse.

“Our friend Daniel Taylor is at home in the highest reaches of the tallest mountains in Nepal, pillars that reach into the jet stream as it whips past the peaks. After reaching a high glacier, he found it covered several feet deep in a crazy quilt of new boulders, released by the permafrost melting at elevations never anticipated before. Indeed, he had to shelter in caves during the day as the mountain fell around him. This land has always been dynamic but at tectonic pace; a slow catastrophe as the Indian tectonic plate continues to move north, diving below the Himalayan plateau, raising it even higher into the sky, the friction building over decades until it predictably releases some of the most severe earthquakes on the planet.

*Silent morning light strikes Point Sublime a mile above Hermit Rapids in the Canyon called Grand.*

“What Dan’l saw was not caused by the rising of the tectonic plates but something more like a planetary death rattle, the climate melting snow and ice quicker than even the highest mountains could withstand.

“Who could imagine the Himalayas falling apart? But then who could imagine 90 degrees Fahrenheit on the northern Arctic coast of Alaska? Or ice shelves the size of nations breaking off in Antarctica at the other end of the planet? Boreal forests turning into fire-storms? Hurricanes so regularly severe we need new measures? Extinctions accelerating at a rate unknown since the dinosaurs left town?

“Equally, who could imagine battle tanks, cluster bombs, and missiles raining down on European land in Ukraine only a generation removed from the ‘never again’ wars, or violence erupting like a spewing volcano in Palestine/Israel, in Myanmar, in Tigray, in Sudan, in far too many places, with threats of more to come? The United States Capitol under violent siege, an impossible act defended by people sworn to protect dialogue and deliberation – and then the next election voting in the instigator in chief? Nearly the entire miraculous South African miracle of a peaceful end of Apartheid desecrated by the most venal and brazen kind of state capture?^[1] The impossible concentration of wealth in a handful of impossibly rich human lives and a new Feudalism delighting a few while hundreds of millions have no clean water to drink or a place to defecate (‘Let them eat tweets’)?

“We may be in the last tragic era of our young species. We are only a few generations into the period marked by what we may now call the Anthropocene.^[2] We broke the world, it’s ours now, and as we see the collapse underway, we realize our fundamental human impact on the complex human ecosystems. Maybe the humbling gives us hope that we might yet act responsibly. We will need more than humility, though; we need to be deeply accountable for our presence in the world. That is what this compact book is about.

“How are we to grasp the totality so that we act in ways that lead to life? This is why this book, and the Fellows who helped shape it, ask how we can be deeply accountable in investing our relative handful of years, our small weight of influence, our inherent capacities to choose, to act and to move against the abyss. What could be more important?

“It’s not illusionary to believe that, together, we can achieve more than we might imagine. Paul Hawken, writing in Blessed Unrest in 2008,^[3] estimated that by then two million non-governmental organizations had emerged over a few decades, each finding its way to lay hands, on and lend energy to, some hopeful possibility. The pace and urgency of that creative activity has only swelled since he wrote. Today almost every significant issue has attracted hundreds, if not thousands of life-seeking organizational energies. In the most preposterous and unlikely places, hopeful energy is finding voice and creating traction. We are not asked to be deeply accountable for something that isn’t possible. Everything we hope for is already happening.”

*This autumn aspen on the North Rim is probably ash now but another is likely growing from burned over seed.*

Do not try to outrun the boulders or cool the arctic. Look directly at the profound challenges, but with eyes wide open to be part of a Great Turning – a turning toward life. Things are not just breaking down; they are also breaking open. Sense that the quickening forces that threaten collapse may be matched, maybe more so, by an accelerating mesh of generative movements. We not only must, but we can use our most powerful human capacities to make the choices that lead to life, not just away from death.

How to signal to each other that we are not giving up on life?

If you are an American, make sure you have a plan to cast your vote. Our government carries outsized impact on global phenomenon with many things simply impossible without a functional government in the United States. Voting may not be as easy as in the recent past. Make sure you do.
Be generous with the many organizations and efforts throwing themselves into the torrents of pain and suffering, and into the rising tides of grace and hope. A vast portion of wealth is currently in the hard fists of mean-spirited people thinking of private islands and Mars. As the multi-billionaires act disgracefully, it is up to those of us thousand-aires and hundred-aires to pick up the slack. You and I have pockets that need to be emptied. Don’t think too hard; if someone is doing good and asks for help, give it. Now.
Move together and into the streets. Be joyous, not angry; but be together. If you haven’’t been to church in a while, this is a good time to show up and breath in some hope. I’ll be moving in silence in the first ever Quaker Silent Walk for Peace in London September 19th. Worship in the Quaker manner but moving our feet (slowly) for peace. If you’re in a more chatty mood, find out where Dr. Barber is walking or Invisible or Interfaith Alliance. Don’t be alone.
Go someplace green, put your hands in the soil—I mean into the soil where you can feel the life in the roots. Then find some moving water; look closely and really feel it. You will notice life hasn’t given up. You shouldn’t either.

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You’ll like the whole book: Taking Responsibility for the Life of Complex Human Ecosystems. Anthem, 2025. Please avoid Amazon for all the reasons you know: try here:

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Oh, and the footnotes:

[1] Ivor Chipkin, Mark Swilling, Haroon Bhorat, Mzukisi Qobo, Sikhulekile Duma, Lumkile Mondi, Camaren Peter, et al., Shadow State: The Politics of State Capture (Wits University Press, 2018).

[2] The International Union of Geological Sciences has decided not to apply the term Anthropocene to a new geological age, but it notes that the term will nonetheless ‘remain an invaluable descriptor of human impact on the earth system’; see Raymond Zhong, ‘Geologists Make It Official: We’re Not in an ‘Anthropocene’ Epoch,’ New York Times, March 20, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/climate/anthropocene-vote-upheld.html.

[3] Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, and Why No One Saw It Coming (Viking Press, 2007).

Astrological

The eclipse drew a hundred of us to the ancient meadow hill that had seen earlier and better eclipses. This one got to about 90%, so the birds noticed and the light got weird. But the weather was so clear that we had to look at each other to decide if it had actually come and gone.

The eclipse drew a hundred of us to the ancient meadow hill that had seen better eclipses. This one got to about 90%, so the birds noticed and the light got weird. But it was still too sunny so we had to look at each other to decide if it had actually come and gone.

The last really good one was in 129 when the Romans had their boot on the neck of Brigante tribe. They would probably would have watched from the hill across the Aire Valley where a modest neolithic stone circle has seen a hundred eclipses. The Romans huddled in their posh villa.

In 629 another eclipse darkened Skipton briefly. The Romans left a clutter of petty kingdoms when they left. The Vikings would come a bit later. Skipton was part of Craven that survived in the fluid boundaries of the Saxons and Anglos, with everyone keeping an eye on the crazies to the north later known as Scots. This was not really a “civilization falls in flames” situation like our squabble feels like to us. But maybe it was more what the formerly proud Americans will be living through for the next couple of decades. The people kept their name—still called Craven, 2,000 years after Hadrian visited the tribes. But everything changed.

Even an incomplete astrological phenomenon puts our little human squabbles in context. It briefly gets my mind off of how ICE is writing down license plates in church parking lots to track Christians resisting our wanna-be petty king. They can just ask for mine. In 70 days his chariot’s wheels will fall off when the new Congress is elected. It might take till next March for them to start cleaning up the shambles, but they will do so. This may may not seem of astrological scale, but it is our little tribe and it matters to us.

*Fiddlesticks from about 300 feet above Bank Newton. Thank you DJI drone.*

We fight among ourselves like the Brigantes did before the Romans, who rolled in like China with ascendant technologies. My new boat heater is Chinese and is powered by Chinese solar panels as is the drone that shot this picture of it.

America may not be of astrological scale, but it’s ours and we should do the best we can in our time. Lets start by ridding ourselves of this petty tyrant and his lesser spawn who are so shamelessly leaving our government a hollowed out shambles. This collapse of democracy is impossible to explain to our British friends, since the whole point of the revolution was to get rid of their shameless tyrant. The Brits are not naive about the self-serving American people, as he is not our first transactional leader. Churchill was fighting the Nazis with nothing but his oratory from his London bunker while we were callously turning away inconvenient Jewish ships and bargaining to trade destroyers for Caribbean islands. We did eventually show up to help, but only after a river of British blood had flowed out of a thousand villages. Even so the Brits still honor us in ways we are now radically disrespecting. Not easy to be an American in a pub these days.

And its a lot harder to be an American in a Quaker meeting! We’ll be part of the remarkable Quaker silent march for peace in London September 19th. And we’ll be back to North Carolina to vote. And we’ll be part of the people rising up to ensure the petty tyrant is peacefully ushered back to whatever golden rock he crawled out from. Let him keep all his stolen crap; just go away.

*It is hard to describe the transcendent beauty of the natural life of the Dales, but we have paused in awe for millenia.*

Humans have understood the movement of planets for millennia. The Aztecs, Mayan, Lascaux and Druids all had their versions of stone circles to precisely capture the first light of the new season. Our IPhones are just the latest technology to tell us when the totality would pass over us in the meadow as we stood in our moment of awe.

How odd it is that we continually forget the arts and crafts of human relationships that make life possible. Every generation has to relearn how to deal with Roman provincials and their tribal underlords. Or the petty kings of Craven. Or the brothers in the colonies who were so clever with their 3/5th of a human arithmetic, as they spoke of natural rights of all people. And our shambles of a government now.

We have unprecedented connectional tools that somehow fail to connect us at all.The tyrants and their entrepreneurial vassals seem so powerful. But maybe it too easy for us to speak truth to the power who have everything but truth to work with, so we underestimate how much power we have. Blogs are like drones in this new era. They may not seem like much, but notice who is controlling Hormuz.

We must claim our lives in the places and predicaments in which we live now. The Brigantes couldn’t vote, but we can. So before reaching for the spear, make sure you are registered to vote and make damn sure your vote is counted.

It is not too late for money to matter for people you wish to govern. TC and I keep sending money to candidates like Roy Cooper and, locally, Amy North. It makes me happy to send funds to Talarico (my favorite seminary student) and Dan Koh, Howard’s son in Massachusetts. And Vote Common Good, William Barber, Interfaith Alliance and Move On. Don’t forget your local democratic party office. They are the ones that cross the finish line at precinct level.

*It is always worth paying attention to important cycles from eclipses to elections.*

And don’t just send your money, get on their websites, volunteer and show up.

Now.

Don’t wait for the next eclipse.

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Who we are

*It was critical to the painter/prophets of Lauscaux to locate humans among other species. How much more important for us now?*

You may have noticed that we live amid many ugly and cruel inhumanities in shockingly unexpected places, most weird of all, the land three religions call Holy. We seem to be getting worse. Last century was likely the most violent of our species long trail and this one is not shaping up well.

In 1940 Nazi-occupied Bordeaux, four teenagers stumbled across a cave near Lascaux that had been undisturbed for 18,000 years. One found it, looking for his dog, who had disappeared up on the side of an unremarkable hill, not mind-bending art. One of them was Jewish, living in the village hoping to be invisible. But the dog had gotten stuck in the entrance. Once all four crawled inside, they quickly realized they were in a limestone cathedral. They were the first humans in 18 thousand years to look up at Actual Intelligence.

I followed those boys along with TC and two grandsons and my daughter Lauren, who has written a play about the caves that will be premiered at the Roundhouse Theater next year. Ryan Rillette, the artistic Director, arranged the visit to the caves and walked in awe with us.

The painter prophets of Lascaux were us, minus IPhones, our plastic avalanche and 2,000 pound bombs dropped mindlessly on strangers. But they were probably no better or worse, smarter or dumber, than we. About the same size, same vocal chords, brains and posture with which to speak, sing, dance and do art of a very high order. They ate a lot of reindeer, which they did not think any more sacred than we do chickens, so did not paint them. Standing below the paintings, I see that while we’ve learned a lot, we have perhaps forgotten more.

*The point wasn’t to celebrating killing the deer, but to SEE the animal in its vitality. Notice the breath!*

The cave was painted by people set apart by such sophisticated nuance that they inspired Picasso. They painted animals so vivid they moved, swam and leaped on the walls. You can almost smell the breath of the bull and draw back from the bear’s claws. They didn’t just paint on the rock; they studied it so closely that they used its texture to give perspective and dynamism. It was part of their palette: the calcite in one place made the pigments leap; the limestone in another gave a different aura to the animals.

They seem to have chosen the cave partly because it was oriented so, at the summer solstice, it would catch the sun to make the cathedral vibrate and dance.

Why would they pour time and energy into something in the ground? It would be arrogant to think we know. But the auroch, buffalo, bear and elk our fellow humans painted shows it was important to them to know who they were as humans among a complex order of species. That is exactly what we have forgotten.

*See how the animals are in and among each other in such muscular vitality and presence.*

With such high technical proficiency, they would probably like our IPhones. But they would pity us for not knowing who we are and where we live.

Who are we? We are animals among a pantheon of other animals, from auroch to earthworms, who together keep the world fit for all. All of us—every one—is made for good and made to be good for all. That is the moral point of the painting that can’t be missed as we see it 18,000 years after the pigments were blown onto the rock so carefully.

There is only one human in Lascaux, an odd stick-figure missing the grace and detail of all the other animals.

These were artists of Michelangelo skill, so they could have made a human of monumental towering grace. Instead, they left us a fellow with an impressive erection, a bird-like head and staff, falling backward. Maybe he had disemboweled the charging massive buffalo, or maybe the other way around. Not triumphal; kind of pathetic and small, really.

If you laid just 200 of my lives end to end you’d be among those artists who saw a world of dynamic nuance, Spirit and energy. They knew they were as weak and slow as we are,but maybe also prone to exaggerated pride and privilege. So they said to stop and be still. Consider the creatures of grace and rippling power. See how they move and breath, swim and leap. Notice especially their breath that later Greeks would call Spirit. They—and dare we say even we—are alive.

The artists did not leave a single moral mandate, no ecological tips and tricks, no guidance on dealing with damaged tyrants, no user manual for the world. There are symbols among the paintings, but we do not know what they mean. But we can’t miss the point: pay attention.

Once we know with whom we share the world, we can figure everything else out, although it is late, frankly. There are no aurochs or cave lions left. We proud penis people have disemboweled entire continents, even turning ocean currents bent and flaccid. None of the species painted on the rock exist anymore. In only 200 of my lifetimes, all were killed leaving behind weak domesticated imitations. Maybe it is too late for us, too, and we should find a cave built for sorrow at what is lost so that some boys in 40,026 can begin again.

But maybe not because the natural world is coiled to spring back.

*River Six guides our view over the Broughton Estate land finding its way back to normal after 32 generations.*

As we visited Lascaux I was reading about the movement to “rewild” the earth. The leading icon is Knepp Estate in southern England, that turned back toward life only a quarter century ago. And only three miles from where we sleep in our narrowboat, the Broughton Sanctuary turned onto the same path seven years ago. William the Conqueror (THAT one) gave the estate to the family in 1097. The 32nd “custodian” had a daughter and realized that she—the 33rd—needed a whole different plan. He knew who and where the family was. His daughter’s 3,000 acres is early in the process of releasing the wildness on land, nearly eaten to the root by sheep for centuries. I’ll write more about this in a later blog. But I’ll just say that the message written on the recovering moorland is the same as that on the Lascaux walls.

*Alive because of the mycelliar web, and already giving birth to a young ash beneath its branches.*

The ecologist, River Six, guided us through Broughton. We stood next to a 300 year ash that almost died down to its last leaf, now healthy and even casting seeds (one of which is already 7 feet tall). He casually noted that it lived on the mycelliar web that crossed over beneath a path to the nearest Ash about 200 feet away. He said that a normal tree in a normal season produces way more nutrient and energy that it consumes, so is happy for its excess to flow to kin species and then to others nearby, such as the Hawthorne. “Are trees made for generosity?,” I asked. He liked the thought and agreed, noting you can see it even in a violated and degraded landscape where you’d think it was every tree for itself. A normal open forest is a thriving web so generous it even welcomes–depends on–grazing animals and beavers to live.

Once we see where we are and who we are, we realize the big surprise is not the consequences of centuries of rapacious behavior, but the capacity of the natural systems to spring back with astonishing speed. Our intelligence can make us good partners—the biblical word is steward—to help the systems do what they are made to do. If the beavers are missing, a steward can go find some and introduce them to the the ruined watershed.

What if you, like me, have not inherited a three thousand of acres estate with capital and connections? My brother and brother-in-law have a quiet clue. Wild what you do have. David and Lisa live in a 150 year old Victorian home next to our canal in Skipton with a front yard about 20 feet by 40 feet. Half of it is now wild with the miniature riot of bees, bugs and volunteer plants—Broughton in a microcosm (without the beaver).

*David and Lisa Lumb’s half wild front yard in Skipton. The bugs are happy with the start.*

My older brother Ron invested 10 years to lead his otherwise normal Presbyterian church near Baltimore to restore their two acre overgrown back lot into a miniature native wilderness. Long lost birds have found it and raise their young. People from miles around come to walk its paths and remember who they are. Wild!

“Only a drop in the ocean,” you might say. But what do you think an ocean is?

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Way

A picturesque view of a green field surrounded by trees, with rolling hills and a clear blue sky in the background. — *What is most interesting is how you get from here to there. Stepping through the hawthorn to the meadow. Or from who I was to who I am becoming.*

We were in the Beer Engine—our preferred Skipton pub—talking with three men from Liverpool who detected we were not from nearby. I tried on Canada and then admitted to North Carolina with Memphis sauce, ending with an apology for all that is America these days. “Don’t worry, mate; everyone has a rough patch; this is yours, but we know you’ll come out the America we know.” Generous people who have seen Kings, despots and even Beatles come and pass in time.

Everyone paying any attention these days is a former whatever they used to be. Whoever you were 5 years ago tells me nothing about today, much less tomorrow. We are all in motion; those who grieve what has been lost and, interestingly, those who thought they won. This is true for those clear about ideas and identities they left behind and, interestingly, those who thought they were snug in a new intellectual, spiritual or political home.

Several rabbits grazing on a grassy field adorned with yellow flowers, with one rabbit in mid-leap. — *My grandson Charles took this of bunnies on the hop. It’s all about the motion.*

We are all in motion.

We are former something.

We are all hyphenated.

Some of us have more than one hyphen: Methodist-Baptist-Quaker, with a side order of Celtic, Buddhist and Bhai influence all the while thinking the agnostics have a point.

Hyphens don’t hold things apart; they mark where the energy is most alive, where the intellect is dynamic. The hyphen, like a boundary, is where the life is emergent, testifying to where former and future engage. The Quakers speak of the “absolute perhaps,” refusing to stop creation of any kind. In the early 1600’s they risked their lives to “seek” and have not quit.

The hyphen is a witness to life-in-process. Giving up on the binary this-or-that in favor of the dynamic flow.

Network theory used to stress the nodes; Ingold’s more advanced meshwork theory emphasizes the knots where lines of relationship stabilize. Both can be transactional, focused on mere exchange, but brilliant Dr. Thandeka Cochrane noticed in Malawi that the complex human mesh is influenced by affection, not just exchange. Hyphen theory is most interested in what is happening in between stable states, nodes or knots. In our current time—and as far ahead as I can see—we will live in between. We. must not dispare our former selves, not fully landing on our new names as we know there is another hyphen to come as politics, theology and life itself move.

A few years ago we realized there were more people who chose “none” as their religious identity than any of the name brands—about 100 million people in the United States alone. A closer look at the “nones” shows that only about 10% are actively hostile to religion with another 20% simply so done with religion as to not care about the question. About that same number are confused by the categories or disappointed by the religions on offer, But they have the same prayer life as most Protestants and Catholics. The study calls these “NINO—Nones In Name Only.” The largest group have few religious behaviors, but continue active curiosity about things spiritual—classic “spiritual but not religious.”

Interior view of a grand hall with wooden arches, featuring a large globe suspended from the ceiling and numerous busts displayed along the walls. — *The Long Room, Trinity College, Dublin where thinking has been in motion since 1712. They raised the roof in 1860 to make room for new thoughts.* *They added four women to the statuary and the globe more recently.*

These last two groups are the hyphenated people in dynamic motion from who they were to who they are becoming. These are the people I meet in every movement doing something good, from delivering food to terrified immigrants in Minneapolis to patiently knocking on doors to register voters. This is who goes to theater. It includes almost everyone in a school of divinity like Wake Forest.

A vibrant garden scene featuring colorful flowers and greenery, with a wooden sign displaying the words 'Simple. Radical. Spiritual.' — Two hundred seekers–Quakers–are buried in this garden of the Skipton Friends Meeting that still seeks here 350 years on.

The hyphen marks an upwelling of energy. It is much more interesting and lively than adding or subtracting an opinion. A hyphen inevitably draws one into working relationship with other people who are also hyphenated and in motion.

My friend Wayne Merritt taught me Greek a long time ago. He translated Jesus as “you shall know the truth and the truth will make you odd.” Followers find a Way, not a place; a Way between.

How do you know which Way? Do not follow someone else’s anger. Head toward life; head away from death. Follow your deepest joy.

You will not be alone.

Consider

Colorful stained glass window depicting various biblical scenes and figures, featuring angels and characters in historical garments. — *We must all protest at some risk, artist, writer, citizen.*

I pray for any man with a tortured soul, whether hiding in the bamboo forest behind Walmart or awake all night in the White House. And I pray for all those within range for the courage to protect others from his actions. We have emergency centers for the fellow behind Walmart; 25^th amendment for the other one.

I do not know whether the military of my nation will follow orders they know to be war crimes. They are bound by oath to say no because it is wrong and it is stupid.

They know we cannot live in a world where political differences permit one to starve civilians or deprive them of water. Why should not the Iranians feel justified to dump a bucket of poison in my town’s Salem Lake?

I remember my disgust and shame at the Vietnam pictures and the eventual trials that stained an entire people. This current abomination in Iran is worse–premeditated, taunting, wrapped in childish sacrilege and swagger. We will never know all the names of all the innocent dead.

We the American people elected this man twice, so all this is our shame. When the war crime trials go forward we will feel shame. Ask any German.

I am among the Quakers these days in my spirit. Theirs is an inconvenient,odd and quirky witness, odd and quirky. Hundreds died in cold English prisons for those quirks; generations were refused access to university, medicine, law and elected office. They are still regularly arrested even today for Palestinian protests. Hard people, these. But they have been exactly correct for 350 years about state violence. They said that preparing for war creates war. No Christian may participate. How does one—me— unravel that participation while living in the most militarized and now lawless empire in the history of the species?

I write this before his deadline threats about something he said he didn’t care about three days ago for which he is now willing to erase a whole civilization. We’ll be relieved if he declares victory and goes onto something else. But this is still a Nuremburg moment; the whole thing violated law from the start. It has already been a warm crime that will trigger trials to come. Nuremburg prosecuters—Americans– accused everyone involved in the design, planning, construction and administration of the death camps. Everyone was tried, not just the person pushing the button to turn on the gas.

All of us must protest at some risk. In Weil der Stadt, Germany, a wartime stained glass artist risked everything with a window panel showing Jesus sending Satan away — with Hitler depicted as Satan! (You can see him in the upper right panel above.) Eight decades later the powerful witness resonates.

I only blog and teach, which seems not so brave. When I flew from LaGuardia Saturday morning a young ICE agent fed my backpack through the scanning machine. He could have taken my phone, read my blog and detained me. Next week, after the war crimes make the government even more afraid of its citizens, he may well be ordered to do so. I hope I write clearly enough to trouble him.

It is never enough to just withhold endorsement of an illegal act, however.

Christians find ourselves entangled with heretical nutters doing violence in Jesus name have a special problem. We just celebrated the miracle of new life born anew! Not enough. We should send money to Central World Kitchen to feed people in Gaza (remember that war crime?) TC and I sent $500 hoping that our daughters and grandsons will live to see a world of law and justice that Jesus and Mohammed (peace be their names) might recognize.

Pray for that man and those who care for him before he hurts even more people.

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A note about the stained witness: The artist, JoKarl Huber, who was considered ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis and faced a three-year work ban, completed the window in 1940, so it was definitely a risk! Thanks to Jim and Reneta Cochrane.

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Do this

Panoramic view of the Statue of Liberty at sunset, with an orange and blue sky and silhouettes of cranes in the background.

This is no time for clever turns of phrase, new fundamental insights, clarifying metaphors, quotes pulled off the internet from this or that repurposed sage. You can find your latest reason for outrage for yourself.

Any American ashamed of the state of our despoiled democracy needs to do one thing this week. Pick one of the more than 3,000 No Kings Events near you Saturday and show up. Rather like voting, you just need to plan that one day so that you do the one thing that matters most.

This isn’t asking you to face down ICE at 20 degrees below zero as our Minneapolis patriots did for weeks on end. This isn’t even asking you to stand in one of the artificially long lines snaking through airports, also gift of ICE. It’s not asking you to ride on one of the humanitarian ships bringing medical supplies to Cuba in protest of the runaway tyrant’s casual swagger.

Just show up with your fellow American neighbors and, with your body, say no.

Your presence–and that of 15 millions of other Americans–will be the largest and best organized protest in our nation since the tea party in Boston. What difference will it make? This will not end the dumpster fire of democracy, which will burn for the rest of my life, at least, but hopefully not my children’s lives. We will experience the kind of hope that wells up among free and brave people on the move. We will realize this energy will be channeled into the nitty gritty political organizing till next November and all the school board, county clerk and agricultural commissioner roles on which a free people depends.

It is our fault that the astonishing machinery of democratic systems was taken for granted, left vulnerable to subversion by people filled with fear, mistaken religious delusion and sadly venal opportunism. Let them savor their stolen billions while they stew in the blood of thousands.

Brooklyn Bridge illuminated at dusk with a flag on top and city buildings in the background. — *The red sign says “welcome.”*

TC and I will be at the main march in Winston-Salem at Union Station near Winston-Salem State University.

Find your local site and register here.

And, just in case you think this is a show, not work, here’s the link for the call about the next step that comes after the massive day or protest. I told you these folks are organized. Here to rsvp.

And, of course, if you need some music to tune up your soul: Jesse Wells “No Kings.”

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Bee

Radical non-conformists built this first Friends meeting house in Skipton in 1689 when slavery was utterly normal.

TC and I got back from England some weeks ago but writing is harder here. Especially as I agreed to teach an online asynchronous Divinity School class next semester. I didn’t quite grasp that this requires all 14 weeks of the teaching in advance by video. Yikes. It’s on the Leading Causes of Life, and I’ve got lots of help. But rather pushed my blog writing to the side.

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This is surely the worst Christmas since the slaughter of the innocents. So many slaughtered in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan by despots worse than Herod. Uncountable innocents bleeding out from the callous withdrawal of USAID across Africa. More ripped away by thugs at Home Depot in the land of the formerly free and brave. Blood on all our hands.

Against this ugly tide we celebrated Christmas for the City in Winston-Salem Saturday evening organized by the preposterously brilliant Love Out Loud. This is a quirky local extravaganza that for 14 years has filled our Convention Center with food, gifts, music from dozens of churches and vaccinations from the health department. This year included our one local Jewish Temple, so Jesus’ parents could have come, too.

Rev Dr David Docusen reminds us that Jesus knew all about the dark and was not afraid.

This event has lots of Hispanic energy, including those hunted by ICE. The organizers work closely with Siembra to monitor the surrounding streets for ICE. This the David that famously hounded Goliath ICE into the light and out of North Carolina and then out of New Orleans, too, which adapted Siembra’s technique, technology and Spirit. Still, as we moved toward the closing candle light vigil out in the street, all eyes were pealed for black SUV’s and big guys in boots. I volunteered to be the Nordic guy to obstruct and get arrested first, which turned out to be untested. David Docusen noted that Jesus knew all about darkness and only promised that we could walk home together as neighbors.

I’m sure Mary sang in an early version of Spanish:

“God’s mercy is for those who fear God

from generation to generation.

God has shown strength with God’s arm;

God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

God has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:46f)

This year has been about the art and craft of avoiding the total eclipse of the heart. TC and I lived half time on a narrowboat in England on the canal dug in 1770’s to link Yorkshire to the slave cotton and tobacco fields of North Carolina. Dug by what were effectively Irish slaves and the local landless just as desperate. Dark. But this is also where the non-conformists hid out from both King and Parliament which finally let them build meeting houses including the one where I worship in silence, listening for the way ahead. That seems—and has always seemed–so little and weak!

I’ve been kept by honeybees for some years as they gerenously to teach, tend my Spirit and feed me with honey and mead. But you can’t do that across an ocean, so I gave them and all the equipment to a local cooperative.

Then I become a honeybee myself. Quakers are as close to honeybees as humans can get. Both are generous, diligent, peaceful and so democratic they don’t even vote. Quakers seek in silence, bees vibrating in the dark. Neither kill to defend themselves, but are fierce for the babies. Both sting. Not like aggressive wasps (or the Christian Nationalists). Quakers sting just as Mary singing the magnificat; refusing to be complicit with the slaveholders, royalty and rich.

The most famous American Quaker prophet was a weaver from Philadelphia known as John Woolman famous for walking and talking across the South meeting with Friends about slavery. And then he followed the cotton thread of complicity to Skipton where he giving his inconvenient witness about their entanglement in slavery the canal made possible. He actually died nearby in Yorkshire after falling ill. Many Quakers were unexpectedly wealthy because their famous honesty made them trusted business partners. They were early investors in cotton mills, shoes (Clarkes) and chocolate (Cadbury and KitKat) and finance (Barclay’s Bank) and canals. They did not want to listen to Woolman; half of all slave ships had been built in Liverpool where the canal meets the sea. But in their silent seeking, his words percolated, turned to conviction and witness that ended the slave trade.

Our modern struggle is so much easier. Even amid the Trumpian blitzkrieg American democracy isfar more vibrant and robust than anything imagined by British Quakers, who were lucky to even have their tiny meeting house in Skipton. Less than 6% of white men could vote; no women at all. They had Thomas Paine pamplets (he, a Quaker). Imagine him with our websites! We citizens have liberties, technologies and revolutionary techniques honed in the long walk fromo the Magna Carta. Give the trumpians credit seeing and acting on all the weaknesses. But they are melting as they are dragged into the light, backbones withering like salted slugs.

Quakers are famous for what they won’t do–take off their hats in the presence of royalty and, of course, refusing arms. But their silence ferments endless creativity for justice and mercy. I’m guessing the Portland frog is one. But once creative courage is in the water, it spreads like a positive virus. King, Lewis, Barber, Indivisible—thousands whose names we will never know.

The Friends’ promise seems whimsical. Simple, radical, spiritual. Be quiet. Listen. Then act on what you hear and never stop.

Consequences

I have a friend whose life has led him to be one of the most powerful Republicans in the North Carolina state legislature, marked by his tenacious commitment to expand Medicaid. He is a grandfather, a religious man with a diligent spirit. I reached out to him a few days ago, knowing he would be voting in a razor-thin decision to gerrymander one more Congressional district to support the desperate effort to protect MAGA. North Carolina is 50/50 Democrat to Republican voters, but our state legislature is ridiculously gerrymandered into a Republican “supermajority”, dependent on his vote to make it 11-3 guaranteed GOP districts. I urged him to have a John McCain moment and do the right thing.

He graciously replied almost immediately to say he had no choice. His district voted 2-1 for that fellow and, after all, “elections have consequences.” In reality, he helped design his district so created his own captivity. Made me sad. For him.

This isn’t about the GOP. The most egregiously ugly and racist actions in North Carolina history were done by Democrats (google Wilmington race riots, 1898). Powerful Democrats did the same things he did at one point.

Surely grown-ups can do better.

MAGA is circling the drain, maybe already down the pipe entirely out of sight of the light. When you bulldoze the White House, kill all the reindeer and prepare the first family landing spot in Argentina, it is clear this will be over soon.

*Farmers, minders andd traders have walked this path above Hebden since neolithic times trying to give the next generation a chance.*

The seven million citizens in the street on Oct. 18^th were so cross-cuttingly normal that David Brooks is thinking of joining them next time. There will be ten million next time and fifteen before the mid-terms.

People like my friend will claim they were friends of democracy all along.

We need to move now from just stopping the thieves to working on Project 2029 so that we create a new possibility, not just another swing of the political pendulum.

We need role models not just ideas. Even better would be a role model with ideas. This is what I found in the London Quaker bookstore, where I stumbled across 87-year-old George Lakey, the author of Viking Economics. Bill McKibben says of Lakey, “almost no one I can think of has made better use of their time on earth.”He also wrote a guide to nonviolent direction action campaigns, called “How We Win” that McKibben compares to West Point for change-makers. But I think we’re already winning; my question is what we do with the victory.

Lakey was like electricity in my wires as he describes how the “Nordic model” was born out of similar polarization as we’re experiencing now in the States. He notes that the greatest changes of the past century become possible in the heat of social/cultural and political pressures. He describes how the poorest country in Europe—Norway—became the happiest, healthiest, best educated, most entrepreneurial and equitable, before it discovered the oil off-shore.

This was totally unexpected–preposterous. The Norway we now know came out of the deep conflicts of the early 1920’s that culminated with an elected retrogressive government that became complicit with the Nazis in World War Two. The name of that president–“Quisling”–is now synonymous with betrayal, but he was elected president before he tried to destroy the electoral process itself. Same deep hole we’re in.

*Just below Skipton Castle where royalty shat down “the long drop.” Times change. People change.*

Lakey knew the inside story as he married into the movement—his new father-in-law was one of the key Christian socialists who began organizing as a college student. He lays out the detailed analysis how the Nordic model (Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland), which offers a practical path for what I call project 2029. Refusing to accept the polarities, the practical politics focus on what is good for everyone, not the poor, minorities, identities, urbanites, soccer moms, or any other specific group. Everybody rises. Or everyone sinks.

”Arguably, what motivates Nordics to pay high taxes for services is that the services are universal rather than targeted to a subgroup of ‘the needy’.” Everyone benefits from quality health care, schools, transportation and pensions, but those who benefit most of all are the political majority composed of the working and middle classes. When someone proposes chipping away at the quality of universal systems, a political defense is mounted by the majority almost regardless of the party they belong to.” Page 174

In a time of radical economic changes, this model makes it safe for innovation. The Nordic countries are pro-business with more start-up companies than the US because nobody has to risk their retirement, healthcare or education for their kids. Basic shared security makes it much safer to take entrepreneurial job-creating risks. Companies pay a lot of tax, but they get an extraordinarily rich environment in which to do business with a highly educated mobile workforce, free to innovate. Everyone is expected to work and hardest of all, speak Norwegian.

This avoids the easy stigmatization and what-about-me poison in American politics. And we would not have to learn Norwegian.

This is very practical good news; the way to channel the solidarity in the streets into clear vision of a better way for everyone. Lakey argues that the severity of the crisis is exactly what makes possible that new thing, a more perfect union built on the unfulfilled promise signaled in the stumbling efforts of those white slave-holding men who risked everything to make the United States happen a quarter millennium ago.

Consequences can be good.

His most difficult counsel is to reject the story of radical polarization itself. Take health care policy: “The reason the United States has failed to adopt universal health insurance is not because it violates our culture, but because special interests prevented the majority from getting what they were ready for.” Page 224

“The mainstream media continues to report the discourse of the political class as if it accurately reflects what Americans think. I find that many people in my audiences who think that Nordic style policies are sensible have no idea that they are, in fact, members of the American majority.” Page 233

Lakey says that “At any time we choose, Americans could decide to learn from our own abundant experience of people-power triumphing despite harsh opposition. In the 1960s, the civil rights movement faced down the largest terrorist movement in US history, the Ku Klux Klan, as well as lawless police. Brave African Americans with white allies won gains and took casualties, while a largely indifferent federal government looked on. Finally, the federal government was forced to act—by that same civil rights movement.” Page 238.

He urges us not to splinter the 5 to 12 million Americans in the streets which are succeeding to break the back of the current ugly cabal. We must not drive away many of the partners we will need for Project 2029. And likewise, we must not personalize this about you-know-who.

Again, Lakey is right on target in noting that the Norwegian left “understood that Quisling was a symptom, not the cause of the mess Norway was in, just as Donald Trump is a symptom, not the cause of the mess the United States is in. Rather than obsess about the symptom, progressive Norwegians focused on the cause, which was primarily the dominance of the economic elite…..by targeting the elite in nonviolent campaigns for specific widely shared demands. So many people joined the growing non-violent direct-action campaigns that Norway became ungovernable by the economic elite.“ Page 256.

Lakey closes his autobiography with a story from the improbably successful struggle against apartheid and the “joy that comes from going beyond awareness of injustice and toward acting for justice.” He remembers, “we turned a large protest in front of City Hall on frigid evening into an all-night dance, fueled by the heat of South African movement songs…..hour after hour of dancing did more than keep us warm physically. It reminded us that if we tune into what’s happening and act with others, we get to dance with history.”

Project 2029, anyone? Want to dance?

This is where Fiddlesticks will spend the winter across from the Boathouse Pub and Pennine Cruisers. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal was dug in 1770’s by shovel by Irish and Yorkshire workers to move livestone, coal and cotton.

Torrent

Videos and photo from the River Wharfe.

I was supposed to be in India two weeks ago to participate in the Christian Medical College of Vellore’s strategic conclave and to attend the astonishing Sikh Sathya Sai Grama in Bangalore. Instead my visa got caught in the US government’s sabotage of international relations. You can imagine how badly I felt to not be in these sacred places at this time so pregnant with possibility and, yes, danger.

The Sikh One World One Family Foundation supports the Sri Madhusudan Sai Global Humanitarian Mission that provides essential services in 5 world regions, to over 100 countries, and maintains 12 Centers for Human Development (one is coming up in Los Gatos, CA). One of our Leading Causes of Life Fellows, Dr. Sunny Anand is deeply involved.

CMC asked me to speak about the theological clues from the Leading Causes of Life relevant to strategic planning. They take theology more seriously than any Christian hospital in the world—at least that I know about. So I leaned in and spoke frankly. (find the full text here)

CMC expected my remarks to be framed by the new book that came from the Leading Causes of Initiative, Taking Responsibility for the Life of Complex Human Ecosystems—Deep Accountability. And also in the context of my 18 years in hospital leadership roles. That title sounds preposterous but that’s exactly what CMC is trying to do in India in the most complex human ecosystem imaginable. The challenge is especially, dangerously, vexingly hard for a massive academic medical center trying to be Christian in a wildly interfaith context. Especially at a time in India when the god of the medical market is rising in power every week. CMC is among the most eminent medical schools and clinical systems in a nation with more middle class and wealthy people than in the United States.

I based my theological comments on the passage from Ezekiel 47 that Larry Pray told me about one day. “Gary, grab the Bible on your desk and turn to Ezekiel 47! I asked my secretary to go find one, then quickly read about the trickle of living water escaping the temple, running down the street, growing into a torrent downstream over his head. “Man do you not see it?” “See what?” I asked with the man in the water. “That you are being carried by a torrent of life, surrounded by even more life on the banks.” That is what we must build strategy on–that torrent.

Our new book addresses this in the chapter called “Storm” which is inspired by Ivan Illich’s 1970 book, Medical Nemesis. It was audacious to jam Illich in a chapter, even worse in a blog but even a teaspoon makes for hot and uncomfortable reading. Every faith-based hospital and academic medical center I know about long ago became comfortable with the ugly complicities and intellectual capitulations he predicted a half century ago.

In the USA Mr Kennedy may finish off the last remaining scraps of thoughtful mission as the trillion-dollar array of organizations betray their founders, patients, staff and communities by joining in the whitewashing of their complex human ecology. Illich is sadly prescient, but not just sad. Nemesis is the Greek God who brings justice to those enjoying privileges they do not deserve because they betrayed their gifts. Illich focused on the medical science—obvious even a half century ago—as these institutions tuned their financial logic to the most profitable sciences, mostly cardiology, cancer and, as the public aged, orthopedics. That’s what drives the financial engine, builds the massive buildings and pays the ridiculous salaries. And that’s part of what calls forth the certain storm Illich predicted.

These organizations also betray the moral intentions of the thousands of people who give their lives to these organizations. Illich didn’t address that, but I was one of them and I know many more hugely decent people involved. So our book not only grieves for the waste of moral intention but asks us all to focus on being deeply accountable – from wherever we are in the span of our lives.

It is never a convenient time to face the complexity of the human ecology, especially when one is making vast sums patching up the damage that comes from ignoring it. Hospital executives and Board members have nearly unanimously decided to take giant steps backward as quietly as they can terrified that the MAGA or MAHA people will notice the estimated trillion dollars in financial reserves held by non-profit healthcare organizations. So the earlier chest thumping commitments to a diverse community—what we call complex human ecosystems—evaporated as quietly and totally as morning dew in a southern summer day. Shameless; but what attracts Nemesis is their pride in these business decisions that betray both faith and science.

Promotional poster for a double book launch at the University of Cambridge, featuring two books: 'Taking Responsibility for the Life of Complex Human Ecosystems' and 'Handbook on Religion and Health'. The event includes details such as date, time, location, and speakers. — *Follow the link to register for the event by Zoom.*

The most obvious action of Nemesis is likely be the taking away these organizations’ non-profit tax benefits. MAHA cares as little about their mission as do their Boards, viewing them realistically as just part of the corporate healthcare industry which they believe should be in the hands of the most efficient capitalists—Google, Microsoft, Amazon, whoever. Without well-funded Medicaid, Medicare and public health these organizations are forced toward the high-margin services and they will supplicate before these deep wells of capital. Of course, the health-tech firms know that Artificial Intelligence will decimate physician-driven hospitals and allow for precision cherry-picking of paying patients. They will let somebody else feed medical scraps to the poorly insured middle class and the poor. Faith-based hospitals could have invested this past half century arguing for policies building deep accountability to the science of prevention, chronic condition management and truly effective care. Instead they invested in self-serving revenue-oriented policies. This eroded any possibility that the public they were supposed to serve would now protect them when Nemesis comes to call with all its profoundly bad news.

The good news is clarity that it didn’t have to be this way; and it doesn’t need to be this way in the future.

Every part of this book is about deep accountability, and only one chapter deals with healthcare. Those of us who do care about the health organizations – public, private and faith-based – will need the other chapters to think with, to break the deadly intellectual dead-end the health sciences have trapped themselves in. We need clarity about how much capacity we have to act, invent, choose and imagine. We need to join economist Mariana Mazzucato’s fundamental new thinking about what and who produces value in our current world, unmasking, like Illich, those who are satisfied with mere cost and acritical profit-taking. We need mycologist Merlin Sheldrake’s whole new way of seeing how we humans move toward each other to make new social and political possibilities real. And we need the dramatic insights about social meshworks that are so much smarter than the dumb computer networks we’ve long tried to emulate with such meager swill.

A serene landscape featuring a river reflecting trees with autumn foliage, surrounded by lush green hills and a blue sky.

We can reclaim the light we have to live by, the joy that is the natural fruit of taking responsibility for the full life of the complex human and natural ecology where we live. We are not leaves before the harsh winter wind.

It is Spring time. It is always Spring time. Even in the dark and cold of January life is finding its way all day and night, never resting, always emerging, never quitting. Joy! Life works.

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Ribblehead Lessons

The Ribblehead Rail Viaduct is a wonder, but like the US Constitution it did not anticipate all the challenges it would face.

The founding brothers of the United States of America crafted an exquisitely complex array of checks and balances, anticipating craven behavior by tyrants. Like the stone pillars of a high arch built to defy gravity, ice and wind by carefully balancing opposing forces, they expected an American King George rather like our current imitation. They worked fast as best they could in a hostile time, but could not think of everything; such as the weak behavior of Congress collapsing like bricks made of poor clay.

I thought of this standing at the foot of the Ribblehead Viaduct that curves across a high valley near the apex of the rail line in the barren mountains of Northern England on the way to Scotland. Graceful, audacious–arching in every sense—the span is on post cards, hats, t-shirts and coffee cups. Beautiful but dangerously flawed.

A coffee mug with an illustration of a viaduct and a postcard featuring a steam train crossing a viaduct against a scenic backdrop, placed on a wooden table. — The curving arches adorn all sorts of bling and merch. Engineers look more closely and admire the repairs.

My father would have noticed all the repairs. An engineer, he taught me to look under the bridge for leaking water and loose stone. The bridge, like our Constitution, was built in only six years across terrain considered impossible. Corners were cut sort of like our lazy 3/5^th decision regarding Black people. Water driven by mountain wind found the weaknesses and did as water does. The huge stone pillars were left hollow, allowing water to erode from the inside out. The bricks at the top of the arch were made local, fast and cheap; some of the limestone was cracked. It lasted longer than my father would have expected, but its inevitable failure nearly caused the closure of the entire railroad only a hundred years after hundreds of workers died building it.

As everyone pointed fingers, one engineer figured out how to do what should have been done in the first place. Facing calls for drastic closure, he got permission to experiment. After carefully observing all the failure points, he filled the hollow pillars with concrete, inspected every stone and brick, replacing even those thought impossible to reach. New roadbeds rebuilt to drain correctly. Lots and lots of iron bracing, rivets and bracing my dad would love. Thoughtful engineering saves money. Only $3 million saved the route for all the dependent villages and those hurrying to Scotland, staring at their IPhones today.

Grown ups make things better for people they will never know. The are rewarded with a quiet pint to reflect on a life well lived.

Close-up view of a stone pillar of the Ribblehead Viaduct, showcasing its rough texture and repair features against a blue sky. — *The repairs were more like surgery, carefully splicing, replacing and strengthening the high pillars.*

American grownups could do that soon.

The fellow imitating a stumbling King George will pass as did all the failed tyrants like him. We will have a damaged and unsafe democracy, but we will be finally see the design flaws. Some call for a whole new bridge, which will just have a new array of flaws. This one just needs thoughtful repair.

Soon—perhaps two, maybe four, six or eight years from now we can fix the flawed structure so that it can carry the weight of free people. Those citizens can make the collective decisions necessary in a tiny world experiencing the wild winds of climate change. We don’t have to invent the rails, just make a bridge that can bear the weight in hard weather. We have plenty of science, engineering, social intelligence, political sense and faith to do that.

We can protect ourselves from predatory gangs. It may take longer than my lifetime to earn the trust of our world partners, but they have had hollow pillars, too, and will probably welcome a chastened, humbled people.

Even as the pillars sway, we can see the future to choose. It will be solar, now outrunning even the most wildly optimistic projects of Al Gore on maximum coffee. That kind of energy is safe for democracy unlike oil or coal. It thrives, decentralized. Even our tiny narrowboat has enough to get us off grid except for clean water. That’s true in your life, too; you just don’t have to know it (how many gallons a year do you use; where does it come from?). But almost all the problems are solvable once we can turn our attention toward actual threats instead of the ones whipped up to make us afraid of ourselves.

If anyone is anxious, it should be former FBI Director Jim Comey who was just indicted, blowing past all the norms of the criminal justice system to serve a tyrant’s vengeance. Comey asked people to vote. The only way out of the deep trouble our country is to ensure free and fair elections where people who believe in democracy turn out in record numbers. (Joyce Vance has straightforward counsel.)

Congress can fix what is broken, if we had a Congress. There are dangerous calls for a whole new Constitution. It just takes some new laws designed to fix some simple design flaws. Getting a functional Supreme Court will take longer, but once the tyrant passes, they are likely to be more inclined to obey laws themselves. A functional Congress only takes about 300 grown-ups between Senate and House, maybe 320.

Each legislator is elected in a small geography in which every door can be knocked, every voter known. Every district is likely to have a demonstration October 18^th that you can attend with fellow citizens. Bring your kids so they see free people standing up for their future. You’ll be surprised by who comes along. In fact, invite them.

A view from underneath a large stone arch bridge with two massive pillars, set against a blue sky with scattered clouds and green grass in the foreground.

That march will be called “no kings,” which confused things a bit. The London protest I’ll be at is called, with more precision, no tyrants. That’s the problem that needs fixing. Well behaved Kings are harmless. The better ones seem to help people keep their collective eye on the future. The Brits figured that out centuries ago and we will, too.

All of us—helpful, craven, those not paying attention and the rabid, are just people. Another Quaker tip helps here. Because we are all just people, equal before God and the universe, all external titles are distraction. I would never get a letter from a Quaker, addressed to The Reverend Dr. I’m Gary Gunderson, the king is Charles Windsor, and the tyrant, Donald.

It is good that we know what has almost fallen down. Be done with the anxiety and get to work.

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