Confessions (#24)

The first pickles of this season, and the first in a few years.
There were four large jars, but I gave one to a friend.
They should be ready for eating in about a week.

Tonight, I would rather be sharing my garden exploits, and some of the rewards of my efforts. However, someone has decided, for reasons unknown right now, to force the election conversation into a new direction. And everyone feels the need to opine online about it, much to the delight of social media profiteers and our nation's enemies. Well, I am only human. Here are my three paragraphs (and a quote).

Yesterday, someone attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally. The twenty-year-old shooter killed one bystander, and wounded another, while grazing his target's ear, before he himself was killed. At this time, no one knows the young man's intent. If it was to remove Trump from the equation, he failed miserably. However, if it was to sow further chaos, division, and uncertainty in an already ugly election year, then he succeeded spectacularly.

 

I have a lot to say, but like everyone else at the moment, it will be born from anger, fear, and frustration. Just like everybody else, my words will end up being wrong, and contribute further to the chaos. And that is what some people want: chaos (i.e, media outlets, social media sites, politicians, foreign adversaries). I refuse to aid and abet their profiteering from our country's struggles. An effective response requires analysis, and that means research and reflection. Twenty-four hours is not enough time.

However, I will share something. Self-righteousness is a terrible sin. It blinds you from doing actual good in the world. And it is easy to see it in others, but near impossible to recognize it in yourself. Perhaps one of the reasons I do not write much about politics and current events, is because I am still working on that log in my own eye. Though, I confess, those do not look like slivers of wood in my fellow citizens' eyes, either. Just saying.

Why do you gaze at the splinter in your brother's eye

Yet not recognize the log in your own eye?

Or why say to your brother,

"Let me take the splinter out of your eye"

When your own eye carries a log of wood?

You hypocrite, first remove the log from your own vision,

And will see clearly enough

To pluck the sliver from your brother's eye.

(Matthew 7:3-5)