Telling our personal stories is often about reprisal or vengence or punishment. But what if the villains cannot be touched? Then reshape the story! Make the story about lessons learned and hopes revived. Make the story about the emotional impact and survival and empathy.
Every woman must think of herself as a teacher. Even without a classroom, a woman teaches the young women and girls in her every expression and action.
Those of us who are aging need to remind ourselves that we've endured this bull ride before, in many ways, at varying degrees of pain or loss. Our minds must remain resilient, must be challenged and ever-learning, and we must be able to withstand any suffering with the belief in our purpose.
Jesus entered the Temple to show that the Pharisees are profiteers, weak, corrupt, and untrustworthy. One person is all it takes to show the world that something good cannot be built on a foundation of corruption and criminality.
The energy we need to stand up to bullies, to the cruel MAGA agenda, to fearful situations, and to the dark unknowns will come from the courage we have used before now and the courage we must share with each other. We cannot destroy the evil; we can and we must destroy its powers over us.
This is a tribute to my younger sister. She was strong, beautiful, empathetic, generous and good. I miss her.
Henrietta Lacks gave far more to the story of humanity and women's strengths than her cancer cells gave to science. Let us think about her love and trust, her courage and persistence.
They (America's white evangelicals and fundamentalists) are who they are because Power and Greed never changed their core beliefs in White Male Supremacy. Power and Greed merely sweetened the political deals they made within the Republican party.
Today's Sunday School Lesson: The old religious studies courses we took for the easy A are no longer valid. America's Christianity is a fractured, weak, sectarian, divided, and splintered religion that survives only to support the far right and the new American fascism. Some sects like Methodists are defying the trend...but it is too little, too late.
Cults thrive when their followers run from challenges. Today's Republican party is a cult, a criminal enterprise that benefits an elite few. Women must accept the challenge of resistance.
Instead of trying to describe what A Real Man should be, I will premise my argument about gender roles on this: Every man and woman should exhibit the very best of human traits. Empathy, Humility, Kindness, Social Responsibility... If we raise the children in our families and communities to fully appreciate the strength in these traits, we will all live in a better world.
One way for a retired older person to believe again in the energies, good will, intelligences, and empathy of young people is to do background on a local film.