Politics is personal because to be alive is to struggle

In the first section of the second chapter of his book Jesus & Salvation: Soundings in the Christian Tradition and Contemporary Theology, in which he introduces New Testament soteriology, Robin Ryan, in reference to "the reign of God" proclaimed by Jesus, notes, "There is an inescapable tension between the 'already' and the 'not yet'...that should not be dissolved." He then invokes the great New Testament scholar, Raymond Brown:

The kingly rule of God was already making itself present in Jesus' person, proclamation, and actions, but the complete and visible manifestation of the kingdom lay in the future and would also be brought about through Jesus, the Son of Man

"This tension," Ryan concludes, "is intrinsic to the Christian understanding of God's saving work in Jesus" (29). What is often left out at this point is that the Holy Spirit, as Luke Timothy Johnson notably pointed out, is Christ's resurrection presence among us. In other words, God's kingdom didn't appear, disappear, and will come back in full when Christ returns. It's been present all this time, striving towards realization, but never being fully realized. Living the tension between the already and the not yet, which can truly be described as dialectical, is precisely what it means to live as a Christian. Living this tension is how you are saved.

God's reign must never be conceived of as another human-enacted utopian scheme. Living the kingdom as a present reality is not primarily, or even necessarily, political, at least not as commonly understood today: activism at the expense love. Striving to live God's reign as a present reality is the embodiment, I think, of what Václav Havel dubbed "anti-political politics." It seems to me that the most compelling glimpses of God's reign present in the world, ancient and modern, have been given when Christians lived God's reign as a present reality under hostile regimes: St. Lawrence/St. Maximilian Kolbe; Sts. Perpetua & Felicity/St. Maria Skobtsova.

It's important to point out a few people who've made God's reign visible in societies that are hostile due to indifference: Dorothy Day and Brazilian Archbishop Helder Câmara. It was Câmara who observed, "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." Living God's reign between the already and the not yet is intensely personal, but by no means private. "Our faith can only be lived through the absence of manifestations of the power of Christ according to our expectations," Luigi Giussani observed way back in the 1960s. "Our Christian vocation," he insisted, "becomes authentic only through this absence [...]. Where Christ is no longer visible as personal action, then His action coincides, becomes one with, the motivation and action of our person..." "I Have Loved You With an Everlasting Love. I Have Had Pity On Your Nothingness," Spiritual Exercises of Communion & Liberation 2016, pg. 2).

Young Steel Workers, by Ivan Bevzenko, 1961- an example of Soviet-style socialist realism

Havel, who was often considered naïve, grasped the danger of utopian schemes:

A heaven on earth in which people all love each other and everyone is hard-working, well-mannered, and virtuous, in which the land flourishes and everything is sweetness and light, working harmoniously to the satisfaction of God: this will never be. On the contrary, the world has had the worst experiences with utopian thinkers who promised all that. Evil will remain with us, no one will ever eliminate human suffering, the political arena will always attract irresponsible and ambitious adventurers and charlatans. And man will not stop destroying the world. In this regard, I have no illusions (Summer Meditations 16)

He went on to describe the struggle for a better society in terms of a war. "Neither I nor anyone else," he went on to observe, "will ever win this war once and for all. At the very most, we can win a battle or two - and not even that is certain." Nonetheless, he still thought it important to engage in the struggle, pointing out it is a centuries old war that will likely stretch for centuries into the future. He speculated that perhaps God wants it this way, which I take to mean it's simply the given nature of reality- you don't have to like it, but you can't avoid it except by self-deception. Never forget you bear some responsibility for reality being this way.

Havel firmly maintained fighting this war "is the right thing to do." "It is an eternal, never-ending struggle," he continued, "waged not just by good people...against evil people, by honourable people against dishonourable people, by people who think about the world and eternity against people who think only of themselves and the moment. It takes place inside everyone. It is what makes a person a person, and life, life" (Summer Meditations 16).

In wake of the woman pouring ointment on his feet in the house of Simon the leper, Jesus told his disciples, who complained the ointment could've been sold and the proceeds used to help the poor, they would always have the poor with them (Mark 14:3-9). The reason for this is not because God wills there be poor among us, but because we refuse to live the tension required to make God's reign a present reality. The woman's action shows the seeming incongruity that happens when the not yet collides with the already. Very often the result of such a collision is beautiful.

"Another day wastes away"

Today the Church celebrates the liturgical memorial of St. Jerome. Jerome is best known for producing a new translation, at the request of Pope Damasus I, of both the Jewish Scriptures and the New Testament from their original languages into Latin. He accomplished his translation in the late fourth century. Gradually, over centuries, Jerome's translation replaced the collection of old Latin translations known as the Vetus Latina. His version is known as the "Vulgate," short for versio vulgata, meaning "commonly used version."

St. Jerome and the Dancing Girls, by Limbourg Bros, 1408

Next to translating the Scriptures, Jerome is known for being somewhat irascible and brutally honest. While living as a hermit Jerome wrote about a time he lay ill: "Daily I wept, daily I groaned...Though my only companions were scorpions, I often imagined that I was surrounded by dancing girls, who kindled the fires of lust." It was Jerome who said, "Prayer is a groan." It was also Jerome who insisted "that God has given us, at the moment of our birth, an angel to take care of it."

Our Friday traditio is Beth Orton singing "Sweetest Decline."

Truth and politics according to Havel

Rather than sit and endlessly brood, pine, worry, gripe, bitch, and fulminate in the face of the horrific public spectacle we have before us, namely our presidential election, I turned to the man I consider to be perhaps the only decent politician of the past 50 years for a ray of hope: Václav Havel. About a year ago I read Michael Zantovsky's biography Havel: A Life. I met my need today by checking out the only book in my local public library system written by Havel: Summer Meditations. He wrote the book in the summer of 1991, during the early years of his first and second presidency of Czechoslovakia, which was before Slovakia achieved independence.

The first chapter of the book is "Politics, Morality, and Civility." In this chapter Havel insisted that "genuine politics," the only politics worthy of being called politics, "is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community, and serving those who will come after us." At root, Havel asserted, politics is moral "because it is a responsibility, expressed through action, to and for the whole." This moral responsibility he dubbed "higher responsibility." It is higher "because it has a metaphysical grounding." The metaphysical ground from which the higher responsibility of politics grows, Havel strongly believed, is our "certainty," either conscious or unconscious, "that our death ends nothing." Our death ends nothing, according to Havel, "because everything is forever being recorded and evaluated somewhere else, somewhere 'above us.'" This certain reality Havel dubbed "the memory of Being." The memory of Being is "an integral aspect of the secret order of the cosmos, of nature, and of life, which believers call God and to whose judgement everything is subject." Most assuredly Havel did not believe "the memory of Being" to be judgement by future generations, who grow more and more forgetful with each succeeding generation; our loss of memory being a major contributor to our civilizational crisis.

At least for Havel, without such a metaphysical grounding nothing, least of all politics, makes sense. It is just this grounding, it seems to me, despite all of our pompous pseudo-religiosity, fake and/or poorly grasped and certainly not-lived Christianity, the U.S. has lost. Our pompous religiosity is perhaps the leading indicator we're trying to build on air. Why? Because it lacks any kind of seriousness and smacks of ideology and not a particularly enticing one. Nonetheless, our constitutional order was built on the kind of ground Havel insisted is so essential.

Perhaps Havel's best characteristic is that he never leaves you hovering over the earth at 30,000'. "As with everything else," he insisted, I must start with myself." He wrote about receiving all kinds of what most people would consider sound political advice and sticking with his conscience by ignoring it all. This is where Havel parts ways with any recognizable form of what counts for political leadership currently in the U.S.

He wrote about being told he "should be tougher, more decisive, more authoritative."

For a good cause, I shouldn't be afraid to pound the table occasionally, to shout at people, to try to rouse a little fear and trembling. Yet, if I wish to remain true to myself and my notion of politics, I mustn't listen to advice like this - not just in the interests of my personal mental health (which could be seen as a private, selfish desire), but chiefly in the interests of what most concerns me: the simple fact that directness can never be established by indirection, or truth through lies, or the democratic spirit through authoritarian directives

Václav Havel

In light of this he went on to admit that he did not know "whether directness, truth, and the democratic spirit will succeed." He was wise enough to grasp the fundamental thing of which we seem to have lost sight: "But I do know how not not succeed, which is by choosing means that contradict the ends." It is axiomatic that ends do not justify means, which is the formal way of stating something we all know- the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Politics, in a nut shell, is about ends and means. Ends are what you set out to accomplish and the means are how you go about accomplishing your chosen ends. It seems to me we are losing the ability to distinguish means from ends, let alone judging between proposed ends or evaluating means. Even more problematic, both parties nearly always agree on ends, as if these are given and represent the demos, the people. They tend to differ, when they differ at all, on means. In the candidacies of Bernie Sanders and to a lesser degree of Donald Trump, we've seen some assertion by the people of desired ends that seem at odds with those that are imposed.

Any chance of success, Havel continued, tests on striving "for decency, reason, responsibility, sincerity, civility, and tolerance." The only acceptable way of striving "is decently, reasonably, responsibly, sincerely, civilly, and tolerantly." For the leader what matters, according to Havel, is not to long for or love power because this makes you willing to do anything to gain it and keep it. "I see the only way forward in that old, familiar injunction: 'live in the truth.'"

Our politics seems to me devoid of the truth. A recent article in the 8 September 2016 issue of The Economist, "Art of the lie," discussed our increasing disregard for the truth despite having access to so much information. All one needs to do to verify this is not only consider our compulsive need to fact check, but to think about how dishonest fact-checking has become. Maybe we've simply forgotten, or have never learned, how to think as human beings. While what is presented as a fact can be true or false in and of itself, a fact does not constitute the truth, which can only be reached by making a judgment. It is a complex, not a simple process. Havel grasped "that morality is, in fact, hidden in everything." This is why he never tired of arguing that art and culture must play a central role in society. It seems he grasped that beauty is what translates truth into goodness and that the Good, elusive though it be, is radiantly beautiful.

"Hope," Havel insisted in his book length interview with Karel Hvizdala, translated into English under the title Disturbing the Peace, "is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out."

"Why do you come here?": Dispatch from distraction

I've always been amused by the phrase employed by would-be writers (of which I am one), "finding my voice." Whenever I think about that phrase in reference to myself I have to admit I find it reductive, smacking of just the kind of thing I want to avoid: hardening of my creative, intellectual, and spiritual arteries. I hope to continue to be awed by wonder and to let the object determine the method. Like most people these days, however, I suffer from distraction and diffusion of my mental and spiritual energies, such as they are, meaning not all that great form the beginning. Whatever I write bears the scars of this psychic disfiguration.

Diffusion and distraction are largely the result of the my overuse, my often compulsive use, of social media. I know, I know, blogs count as social media. But for me blogging is different because, unlike Facebook, Twitter, G+, and the like, I am able to post something and walk away and not wait around for a like, a comment, a share, etc., those dopamine-inducing, or infuriating replies that prompt an immediate reactive response to whatever I may throw out at any given moment. Sure I will check to see if anyone reads what I post, but far less than I used to. Beginning last fall and moving forward to the tenth anniversary of this blog, I was able to reconnect with my original intent in starting this endeavor, something rather modest: to create a weblog, a kind of on-line diary composed of more or less thoughtful compositions, not raw impressions, like a personal diary might contain.

Based on: Hotel Room, by Edward Hopper (1931). Photo: Kim Dong-kyu from New York magazine

Last Sunday, a Benedictine monk drew my attention to a recent article by Andrew Sullivan published in New York magazine: "I Used to Be a Human Being." I commend this piece to you the way it was commended to me- find some quiet time, a quiet place, and read it. Sullivan's recounting of his personal struggle and the more general insights it yields about the impact of the internet (do we still use that term?- "web" is probably better because it's something we get caught in), particularly social media, on us individually and collectively are well-worth your time and consideration. One thing Sullivan discusses is how on-line activities impeded his ability to relate to others, those actually, as opposed to virtually, in his life, or even just to sit and read a book. One observation worth passing along is:

If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal anew to a frazzled digital generation. Christian leaders seem to think that they need more distraction to counter the distraction. Their services have degenerated into emotional spasms, their spaces drowned with light and noise and locked shut throughout the day, when their darkness and silence might actually draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary. But the mysticism of Catholic meditation — of the Rosary, of Benediction, or simple contemplative prayer — is a tradition in search of rediscovery. The monasteries — opened up to more lay visitors — could try to answer to the same needs that the booming yoga movement has increasingly met

Another piece I ran across this morning is also worth passing along- Kim Nicolini's post "Long Drive Home." I have to admit that her experience is very different from own. I mention this because I don't want to co-opt what she has to say, or falsely identify her experience as my own. Maybe it's because her experience is so different from mine than it resonated deeply with me. I don't want to put a Pollyanna spin on her hard-hitting piece (her powerful punches need to be felt, let her hit you), but I am glad she ended by writing about the Glen Hansard concert she attended. Listening to Hansard's songs caused Nicolini to reflect:

Glen Hansard reminded me that despite the ugliness of politics, I don’t have to own them or let them ugly up my life. The human creative spirit is beyond politics and debates. We can make music, art, and poetry. We can dance and love. We can hold onto our inner shining stars because if you are not One Of Those Other Motherfuckers, then you have an inner shining soul. I have mine. It’s vulnerable. It’s been through a hell of a lot in this lifetime. I’m going to do my best to take care of it until I reach retirement, so I don’t drop dead two weeks later but can actually maybe spend the majority of my senior years doing things I love to do rather than things I have to do

This is the part where I am supposed to add my own deep reflection in some kind of meta-attempt to synthesize and maybe one-up both Sullivan and Nicolini. The truth is I can't and so I am not going to try. Instead, I will share some more thoughts refracted through my recent struggle with distraction.

Books I am currently reading

Currently I am reading a stack of books. Apart from three- Robin Ryan's Jesus & Salvation I am reading for our local monthly theology group, Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring I am reading with my 11 year-old son, and Gary Macy's The Hidden History of Women's Ordination I am reading as research for my DMin dissertation and a lecture I have been asked to give on the diaconate in March of next year, I am reading the rest just 'cuz. Due to time wasted going down what Sullivan called the "rabbit holes" of the web, especially in the midst of this horror of an election, which Nicolini had the courage to describe in a manner that I can't bring myself to employ (I am ecstatic she can and does), I am not having much success in finishing these books. While I hope to post here more regularly, my presence on more interactive, reactive, distracting social media will be greatly reduced. In fact, apart from putting up what I post here, I plan to be absent from Facebook, Twitter, and G+ for the entire month of October. During this time I hope to detox and limit my future participation to what is meaningful.

Someone named Douglas V. Steere began his introduction to Image Books' 1989 paperback edition of Pater Tom's Contemplative Prayer with a quote by William Blake: "we are put on earth for a little space that we may bear the beams of love." Lest this, too, be mistaken as an attempt to dress in drag and play Pollyanna, Steere went on to note that Blake's take on human life, in addition to being an apt description of "Thomas Merton's account of monastic prayer," is a "firm reminder of how much remains to be done to prepare man to bear the 'beams of love.'" While we long to be exposed to love's beams, Steere noted, we "fear" love's "transforming power." I don't think it's any great insight to note that since 1989 we've not done much, if anything, to prepare ourselves to bear love's illuminating beams. Rather, I think we've become increasingly intent on seeking out and content to live in the shadows.

Our fear of love's transforming power is what David Bentley Hart took aim at in his recent Commonweal article, "Christ's Rabble: The First Christians Were Not Like Us." Summarizing towards the end his piece, Hart pointed out:

Throughout the history of the church, Christians have keenly desired to believe that the New Testament affirms the kind of people we are, rather than—as is actually the case—the kind of people we are not, and really would not want to be. The first, perhaps most crucial thing to understand about the earliest generations of Christians is that they were a company of extremists, radical in their rejection of the values and priorities of society not only at its most degenerate, but often at its most reasonable and decent

I don't mind mentioning that yesterday I purchased tickets to see Morrissey here in Salt Lake City the day after my birthday at the new Eccles Theater in downtown Salt Lake. Somehow one of the songs off Morrissey's first solo album, Viva Hate, with which he has been opening most of his recent shows, "Suedehead," seems fitting for what might be an early tradito (we'll see). Below is a live performance from earlier this month in Chicago at RiotFest:

One last distracting thought; today is the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Archangels. Sanctus Archangeli, orate pro nobis!

Year C Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Amos 6:1a.4-7; Ps 146:7-10; 1 Tim 6:11-16; Luke 16:19-31

Through these weeks of Ordinary Time, we continue our journey in St. Luke’s Gospel with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem. The word “Ordinary” in “Ordinary Time” does not mean ho-hum. It is not used to contrast it with “extraordinary time,” such as Easter, Christmas, Lent and Advent. It is derived from the word ordinal. Ordinal refers to the position of something in a series. During Ordinary Time we track time by the series of Sundays with reference to the beginning of the liturgical year.

Reckoning all of time as if it were a week, going from Sunday to Sunday, early Christians conceived of Sunday as both the first and last day. During Easter we celebrate an octave that begins on Easter Sunday and ends on the Second Sunday of Easter, which, since the decree of Pope St. John Paul II in the Jubilee year 2000, Roman Catholics observe as Divine Mercy Sunday. The Eighth Day is the new and everlasting day of eternity, the day made possible by God's mercy. This bears noting because today Jesus draws our attention to what matters in light of our destiny: mercy. We are in the midst of the Jubilee of Mercy, which continues until the Feast of Christ the King, which we will observe on 20 November.

“If they did not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31). In the immediate context of this statement Jesus is referring to the brothers of the dead rich man who requests father Abraham to send Lazarus, who is also dead, to tell them to repent by caring for the poor, by being merciful. In other words, it is part of the parable. But this statement, which brings the parable to its close, also points the listener beyond the parable to Jesus’ own great act of mercy, his resurrection, which had not yet happened.

In a similar way it points us not only to Jesus’ resurrection, which has already occurred, but to his return in glory. Christ’s glorious return is fundamental to Christian faith. The indispensable nature of our belief in Christ’s glorious return is demonstrated by our professing each Sunday when we recite the Creed: “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” In light of this we, too, must heed what the Scriptures teach: "For the judgment is merciless to one who has not shown mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment" (James 2:13)

Proof we believe Christ is risen and will return to definitively establish his kingdom can only be given by how we live our lives. This is not to put anyone on defensive by warning you of the coming wrath or anything like that, it’s just to say that ultimately God’s kingdom will consist only of those who seek to live it as a present reality- we call such people saints- and not as a dream deferred, that is, something that will happen later which doesn’t merit our concern right now.

Neither am I suggesting that anyone other than Christ himself will definitively bring about God’s reign. The Incarnation marked the beginning of God’s reign on the earth. In, through, and with Christ, by the power of the Spirit, God’s reign has begun and continues until it is complete. We’re either about ushering it in or not. In other words, we shouldn’t be like the rich man or his brothers demanding some spectacular sign to warn us what will happen if we refuse to make God’s reign a present reality by acting mercifully after the manner of the Good Samaritan.

Through this parable, Jesus draws our attention to what is ultimate by pointing to what is right in front of us. Lazarus sat at the rich man’s gate every day. The rich man did not deem Lazarus worthy of his attention, let alone of his help. At least in his own mind, the rich man had much more important things than to show mercy to the poor, disgusting man whose sores were licked by dogs. As he found out, there was nothing more important than showing the beggar mercy, which is why he begged Abraham, in whose bosom Lazarus received succor, to send Lazarus to warn his brothers to avoid the same hard-hearted callousness. Abraham reminds him that his brothers had the writings of Moses and the prophets to teach them the necessity of acting mercifully.

One prophet who the rich man and his brothers would’ve been wise to heed was Amos. His oracles, through which God sought to call Israel back to fidelity with the covenant, especially by acting mercifully towards widows, orphans, and foreigners among them, were every bit as radical as Jesus’ teaching. In our first reading, Amos tells the wealthy who pay no attention to the plight of the less fortunate that they will be “the first to go into exile” (Amos 6:7).

Our reading from 1 Timothy urges us to prepare for Christ’s return by keeping “the commandment without stain or reproach” (1 Tim 6:14). What is “the commandment”? The commandment is love, caritas, or charity; loving God with all your heart might, mind, and strength. How do you love God with your entire being? By loving your neighbor as you love yourself. In the verse that precedes the first verse of our reading from the sixth chapter of 1 Timothy it is written, “the love of money is the root of all evils” (1 Tim 6:10). It goes on to say that love of money was the cause of some believers straying from the faith. As a result, they were “pierced with many pains” (1 Tim 6:10). The rich man in Jesus’ parable is an example of this. Not one to pull punches himself, Pope Francis, during his Apostolic Journey to Bolivia last year, said the “unfettered pursuit of money” is the “dung of the devil.” As we prepare to receive communion, let’s not forget we come as beggars to the King’s table where he unfailingly has mercy on us.

Today Jesus invites us, as his disciples, to place our hope in him, who is Divine Mercy, by acting mercifully towards others. Practicing the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy, which are depicted in the windows along the north side of our church, is our road to destiny.

For love of country and neighbor

It occurred to me this morning that I haven't been posting much recently. Shortly after thinking that I came across an article that provoked me into a response: "Bobby Knight says if it were up to him, he'd 'have gotten rid of' Colin Kaepernick." My first reaction was, "But instead two universities, Indiana and Texas Tech, wisely chose to get rid of Bobby Knight."

Knight's method of coaching basketball consisted mainly of bullying, insulting, and intimidating players. His coaching method should've landed him in prison. I am not engaging in hyperbole. On more than one occasion Knight criminally assaulted players. He frequently and consistently made an ass of himself. In my mind he is the antithesis of everything sports, especially collegiate sports: is supposed to be about, excellence and character. I guess forced retirement (after Texas Tech fired him) hasn't changed him a bit. Colin Kaepernick has certainly demonstrated more character than Bobby Knight.

I am a veteran who served in a few theaters of combat over the course of my service. I am fine with what Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players are doing this season to draw attention to the problem of systemic racism that persists in our country. In my view, their peaceful protest is one of the things that makes the United States of America the United States of America. Would I do it? No, but it doesn't mean I seek to deny others their right to peacefully protest. For his part, Kaepernick has been more than respectful of those who have registered their disapproval of his protest, as his meeting in San Diego with Army veteran Nate Boyer demonstrates. Boyer, to give him due credit, also showed how we can disagree respectfully.

Let's face the fact that we do have racial problems in this country. Frankly, neither of the major party candidates for president have the credibility or any effective way to address our racial divide. Trump's not so understated racism might prove to be the flint that sparks the dry tinder. For her part, Clinton in the past did more than her fair share to paint all young black men as dangerous and likely criminals.

Not only does love of country not preclude being critical of one's country, from time to time it requires one to be critical. As a citizen of the United States I believe loving my country enough to sometimes be critical is precisely what it means to be patriotic, which for too many seems to equate to being idiotic. I am sometimes critical of my country because I love my country. I have the service to prove my love. If you want to question my patriotism, you'd better pack a lunch.

It's funny to me how so many of the people who are harshing on Kaepernick were sympathetic to Cliven and Ammon Bundy and the Oregon mob who seized a wildlife refuge threatening the use of deadly force, which was not a peaceful protest, but a half-assed attempt at an armed insurrection by a self-selected group of dangerous radicals who took it upon themselves to violently make federal land policy for everyone else. This disjunction- castigating Kaeprnick on one hand and supporting the Bundys on the other- really shows systemic nature of racial division in the U.S.A.

"We were rising from the grave"

In a recent interview with Kate Shellnutt for Christianity Today, John Darnielle, of indie band The Mountain Goats, when asked what his life verse might be, replied: "Most people are going to be from the Gospels or from the Proverbs or Psalms... but mine is 'Should I not pity also Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than' - I can't remember the number, however many hundreds of thousands of people - 'who cannot tell their right hand from their left and also much cattle' (Jonah 4:11)." That is the very last verse of the book.

He continued, "To me, this is the greatest verse. I love Jonah. And it's a very profound question God asks Jonah. Because God is saying, 'You wish ill on your enemies. If you [say you] don't wish ill on your enemies, I'm going to call you a liar. You do. If you have an actual enemy, you want harm to come to him.' Right?"

Keep in mind, while Nineveh was converted, Jonah was not.

Our Friday traditio is The Mountain Goats' "There Will Be No Divorce."