Pissing and Moaning

How sad! The lunch that Mary prepared for me seems to have whetted my appetite while giving me writer’s block all at the same time. When I was in law enforcement we were drilled in the concept of imminent danger. That’s the phenomenon that justifies action up to and including the use of deadly force. For police, it’s an acute event. But I’ve increasingly been experiencing a chronic sense of imminent danger that potentially threatens the whole of humanity. As a nuclear-age baby-boomer this is only natural because I’ve spent my whole life in the specter of global annihilation. But the “signs” these days seem to me as ominous as ever, and I don’t see anyone or anything on the future’s horizon that offers a ray of genuine hope. War, terrorism, disease, hunger, poverty, climate change; these are all very real threats to the well being of our species. And yet we get so caught up in Heath Ledger’s death that there is little to no time to address the truly global issues. It is disheartening to watch the once “high road” campaigns of presidential candidates deteriorate into slanderous spin. Huckabee was right that Jesus was too smart to run for president, but that’s just a fluffy excuse for not taking seriously what Jesus was about. It would probably be smarter of me to skip a day’s post when I’m in this kind of mood, but those damned evangelicals have infected me with their question, “What would Jesus do?”