Send in the clowns...

 "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon you."

               – Jules Winnfield, a fictitious character reciting fictitious Bible verse remotely based on Ezekiel 25:17 in the movie Pulp Fiction.

               –  Also, Pete Hegseth, erstwhile Secretary of Defense, reciting fictitious Bible verse during a Pentagon prayer service last Wednesday.

 "And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them."

               – Ezekiel 25:17 (KJV) 

 So this is where we are.

Pete Hegseth, our pompous, self-righteous, full-of-himself Secretary of Defense, is now leading Pentagon officials in prayer by reciting a passage from the movie "Pulp Fiction" when he actually thought he was quoting Ezekiel 25:17.

A quick scan of the room showed some uniformed officials with heads bowed, eyes closed, as if Hegseth knew what he was doing. I don't know. Maybe he did.

The context for the actual scripture is said to deal with foreign nations who gloated over the destruction of Judah. It's supposed to emphasize God's role in executing justice. Hegseth somehow thinks this verse – either the cinematic or the Biblical – justifies the United States' current military misadventure in Iran.

Meanwhile, as this Hegseth nonsense continues, there are reports that the U.S military is dealing with morale issues, specifically a lack of proper rations aboard several ships deployed in the region. The U.S. Navy denies these claims, but just the suggestion that troops are being poorly fed might raise concerns about morale. The military, after all, marches on its stomach.

Navy chow. Yummm. (USA Today).

 Complicating matters is that the U.S. Postal Service has indefinitely suspended mail delivery to 27 military ZIP codes after the attacks on Iran, so for the time being, military families can't even send care packages to their relatives in uniform.

I guess you can believe Hegseth when he tells us there are no issues with morale, but I have a hard time believing anything this arrogant clown says. So do I believe there are substandard meals being served to sailors and Marines on the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Tripoli? I do.

 While all this mess (pun intended? Maybeeeee) is going on, we have the Vice President of the United States J.D. Vance warning Pope Leo XIV (warning?) that he, the Pope, should be careful when talking about theology.

OMG.

Vance apparently is upset that the pope is not in alignment with the administration's war of choice against Iran. You know, the war where children are blown to bits in their elementary school and civilians are killed by the thousands. Instead, Pope Leo responded with Blessed are the Peacemakers and pointed out that Jesus "is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs."

Vance, citing World War II as an example, said, "I think it's very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology."

This statement got a rise out of Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune. "When he (the pope) talks about matters of theology? Isn't that his job?"

Indeed.

The week didn't let up. We also learned that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, continued his fascination with road kill. In a new book titled "RFK Jr: The Fall and Rise," revealed in a diary entry that he stopped his car on a New York highway in 2001 to cut out the genitals of a dead raccoon for further study, all while his kids waited patiently in the car.

So here's Kennedy, the vaccine denier who holds the very health of the nation in his hands (I hoped he washed them first), adding another chapter to his dead animal fetish. He's fascinated by dead seagull corpses. He once severed the head of a washed-up deceased whale. And he confessed to dropping a dead bear cub off in Central Park make it look like it was killed by a bicyclist (who I assumed would be pedaling as fast as he could in the opposite direction).

Then we learn that FBI Director Kash Patel's alcohol problem has staffers concerned about his well being. Apparently, according to a story in The Atlantic, Patel has dealt with bouts of excessive drinking, at times allegedly locking himself in a room.

These are the leaders of some of the most important departments in our government. All of this should make my head explode. Except that it already exploded several years ago.

Only 198 days until midterm elections.

Release the unredacted Epstein files. 

 

 

 

 

God's Acre, again

By the time Palm Sunday comes around, Kim and I usually have a serious decision to make: Are we going to the Moravian Easter Sunrise Service at Old Salem this year?

Although we have a week to think about it, it usually turns out to be a game-day decision with several critical considerations involved, such as: What's the weather going to be? And do we really want to get up at 4:30 a.m. to get ready for the half-hour trip to the cemetery? And what do we do about breakfast?

This is important stuff because the Sunrise Service at Old Salem is a big deal, sometimes drawing upwards of 10,000 people from all points on the compass. It's one of the most inspiring services I've ever attended and it's been going on every Easter morning since 1772. That's 254 years. Older than the country.

This service almost always grabs me by my own Moravian roots and shakes me to my core in something of a spiritual cleansing, so our final decision whether or not to go often comes down to how contrite do we feel?

Years ago, we found an equally moving moment. We go to God's Acre the day before the Sunrise Service to watch hundreds of people scrub and clean the flat marble gravestones of their deceased ancestors. It's a neat tradition.

A marker gets ready for Easter.

 Believe it or not, this can be a remarkably contemplative moment, too. At least two small brass bands were on hand to practice yesterday, with one of them in the bell tower of the bordering Archie K. Davis Moravian Archives building, while the other was on the cemetery grounds itself giving response.

We saw one group of about 20 people or so clustering around a marker. A child or two was doing some animated scrubbing, followed by "good job" and then a moment's reflection as a person in the gathering spoke a few words about the departed. Sometimes there was light laughter and sometimes there was quiet reflection as they celebrated the deceased. It was both joyous and solemn all at once. And then they'd move on to another gravestone, another relative.

This seemed to be happening all over God's Acre.

I don't have any family buried here, but I do know a couple of people here and we annually look for their sites. It sometimes takes my breath away when we do find them because there are more than 7,000 people buried in these grounds.

And then I give them my pause. 

Because this is the day before the actual service, and it's likely that we are not going to get up at 4:30 to make the trek over here, I conduct my own service in my mind's eye. I feel the sun breaking through the clouds. I see the people scurrying about. I hear the music as it bounces off the hills.

I am admittedly a lapsed Moravian, but I am deeply grateful for my Moravian upbringing, which I hold on to whenever I can. So I ponder the morning sun, the rolling landscape, the rows of white marble stones and contemplate the Easter message as I become my own pastor to my own soul.