Thoughts on Renewing Society

 At this point, I live in one of the biggest cities in the nation, Baltimore.  A few observations about living here have been going through my mind the past couple of weeks, and I wanted to just reflect on some of these thoughts today.  A couple of things led to me doing this, and I want to give a little background first on the topic.

I teach, as I have mentioned, at a Jesuit high school  As part of the Theology department at my school, I am aware that there are some of my colleagues who have more liberal outlooks than I do.  One of those is the 12th-grade Theology teacher, who is an older lady but she also for some reason does give me cause for concern based on some of her views.  She focuses a lot on race, "social justice," and other things, one of which is the whole discussion on what is called gentrification.  Gentrification is defined as "the process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current residents in the process."  Gentrification has become a bogeyman of the political Left, and even this definition reflects some political bias in the way it is perceived.  There are several issues with how this is perceived, and I want to tackle those now.

Many of the opponents of gentrification are also the biggest whiners about so-called "climate change."  One would think that if someone is genuinely concerned about the environment, they might want to tackle urban blight.  However, in many cases that is not the case.  There is a real hypocrisy on the part of Leftists regarding these issues, and the appalling way they approach it reveals what their agenda is truly about.  While of course I would not advocate displacing anyone to make way for wealthier residents of a community, there are a couple of problems with the Leftist view.  For one, many of the Leftists who decry gentrification are themselve wealthy, often White, and they really have no concern for their fellow humanity.  Second, if they were really all that concerned about the environment, then urban blight would be a pivotal issue for them - it is not.  Third, the typical Leftist elitist has little concern about the plight of the lower-income citizenry of the city or about urban blight - their agenda dictates that people have to be divided, compartmentalized, and kept in squalor in order to make them dependent upon the "welfare state" so that they can maintain power.  This is why you don't see Leftists picking up trash in problem areas, and you don't really see any true charity on their part.  If they knew they could advance their own status, they would toss poor people out in a second, and in many cases, what is often called "gentrification" is exactly that - then, the same people use that BS to tell the rest of us that gentrification is somehow evil.  And, the way they do it, it is evil.  Let me go into more detail.

Urban blight is a big problem in Baltimore - there is trash strewn all over many neighborhoods in the city, and no one is attempting cleanup.  Even the "Adopt-a-Highway" programs of the 1980s and 1990s were killed by - wait for it - the Obama administration.  For all the fuss about so-called "climate change," I find it ironic that the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes, the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warrens, as well as countless other swamp creatures in positions of power, want to regulate cow flatuence but have no desire to pick up trash in areas they supposedly represent.  If climate change were truly an issue (and believe me, it is just rhetoric for the career bureaucrats and politicians), then there would be a concerted effort to clean up neighborhoods in these cities like Baltimore.  Even the 11th graders I teach - all practically minority students - understand this, as they all have identified excessive trash as a big issue in their communities.  During the mornings when I am walking to the bus stop to catch my ride to work, I walk past a rowhouse on a major thoroughfare in my neighborhood where the basement entrance has been converted into a makeshift dumpster, and no one attempts to clean the crap up - I have also seen huge rats in the overflowing trash receptacles in the same area, and that increases the probability of disease.  So, where are the politicians addressing this?  That is urban blight, and it is a scandal for our society.  The primary people who are cleaning up communities are by and large conservative or libertarian Republicans, not leftist Democrats.  The Leftists are elitists and do not give a crap about the poor minority households in Baltimore or any other city.  All they do is use rhetoric to tickle the ears of people and rile them up unnecessarily over stupid things.  Enough is enough.

So, is gentrification bad?  It depends on perspective.  If it means cleaning up the communities, repairing homes, and encouraging economic growth for neighborhoods, then there should be no issues.  I mean, everyone deserves the chance to improve their communities, and that should be a primary goal.  However, if it means that rich White yuppie Leftists displace lower-income families in those neighborhoods so they can have yoga studios, marijuana dispensaries, and terrible coffeehouses, then that should be discouraged.  People should not be forced to be displaced, and that aspect of false "gentrification" is immoral and wrong.  And, for other leftists - like my colleague here at the high school I teach at - are so against gentrification, maybe they should put their money where their mouths are and propose something better then.  Maybe, such people should take a trash bag in hand and start picking up the garbage in those neighborhoods if they really care.  I mean, seriously, making people live in squalor to fight the false facade of "gentrification" solves nothing for nobody.  And that is the inconsistency and hypocrisy of many Leftists in their talking points.  So, let me give my own modest proposal of what needs to happen.

For one thing, people in the communities have a certain amount of responsibility to improve where they live.  Especially if they are investing resources into their own homes, they need to show some pride in their neighborhoods.  That means that cleanup needs to take place at a grassroots level, and a measure of responsibility should be endowed upon those who actually live in those communities.  Secondly, I have seen some encouraging things in some areas here - I am seeing some encouraging things in many communities such as community gardens, painted murals on buildings, and those little free library boxes for people to access free books. Some other measures that could be taken is community neighborhood watches to discourage crime (the epidemic of "porch piracy" is rife in many communities, and that needs to be controlled), community assistance programs to assist people having some challenges in those communities, and an easier process for people in the community to start local businesses to stimulate the economy.  Many Leftists oppose stuff like this though because these types of programs encourage self-sufficiency, and God forbid that vulnerable demographics do that!  It would wrestle control from Leftist bureaucrats and place it back in the rightful hands of the local communities. And, that would take power and wealth away from crooked elitist bureaucrats.  Why do you think so many of those swamp creatures are riled up over Elon Musk and DOGE?  There has been a lot of taxpayer money wasted on stupid things, and I applaud Elon cleaning house.  If anything, we need more of that, and also a more urgent sense of accountability in our governing structures.  Hopefully, Elon and President Trump can start a revolution to overthrow rich elitist bureaucrats and restore order and democracy to our nation.  It is time to bring the American Dream back, but in order to do that, we need to eliminate the architects of the current nightmare we have been facing.  A challenge awaits us. 

Any rate, those are my thoughts this week, so will see you soon.

The Backroads

 

I am writing again based on a dream I had last night.  In the dream, my mother was still alive and we were traveling on what looked like some back roads in my home state of West Virginia.  In transversing those roads, what was familiar in dreamland is often not reality once one wakes up, and in real life these roads and scenes technically don't exist.  As is the case with many backroads in my home state, there are turns, crossroads, and even jacknife-like turnbacks, and it was something I felt comfortable and at home with.  At one point, we came to a river in the dream - it looked so much like the South Branch Potomac and Cheat Rivers I grew up around.  In the middle of the river were two barge-like vessels, and there seemed to be an attempt to build a bridge.  The whole thing was quite interesting, and as I began thinking about it after I woke up, I began pondering if a meaning was there somewhere.  And, that is what I want to reflect upon today.

The enchantment of the backroads is an integral fact of life for those of us who grew up in West Virginia, and even on the peripheries of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia that border my home state.  You learn navigating those roads a bit differently from other types of travel, in that landmarks play an important role for local people.  You never say, for instance to turn on Route So-and-So when giving directions - you always say something like, "yeah, hang a left at that barn near the Shanholtz place, and then go to where that oak tree sits at the next corner.  Make a right across from the oak tree, and follow that road to the old Nestor place - nice place to pick blackberries, by the way - and then you will see where you need to go yonder past the old fence."  This is how I give directions pretty much now, and I understand that.  Sure, I know route numbers and streets and will utilize those if I need to (living in Baltimore you have to) but I also still try to identify landmarks where those turns are - for instance, to get from where I live to my work, you have to go down North Avenue and turn on Wolfe Street (funny story about that shortly).  But, for me, I look for the Lutheran church at the intersection, as that is where Wolfe Street is, and I take that all the way down to the courthouse at the corner of Wolfe and Monument Streets.  So, even in the city, I still navigate by landmarks just like I used to do on those dusty old backroads back home.  

Humorous side story about Wolfe Street here in Baltimore.  Wolfe Street is not the most impressive route to travel - it looks like a ghetto as many of the old rowhouses are boarded up, and at certain spots one even sees homeless people wrapped up in blankets sleeping under bridges and such.  However, a source of amusement to break the monotony of traveling that same route every day is the automated voice on the bus.  At every stop, a robotic female voice announces the intersections and transfers to other routes, and for the most part there is nothing spectacular about that.  The only exception is when the bus goes down Wolfe Street - the female robot says "Wolfe" in a flat, almost annoyed tone, and then goes back to the normal cadence of voice on "Street."  What is even funnier though is when she says transfers.  The bus routes that serve downtown Baltimore are not identified by numbers, but by colors - for instance, the bus that drops me off out here at the corner where the school is would be CityLink Navy.  The bus I usually take is local route 21, but it parallels another color bus, the CityLink Gold.  When the female voice announces an intersection and transfers, she sounds like a bubbleheaded Valley girl when she says "CityLink Gold," and likewise that is a source of amusement that makes me chuckle under my breath everytime I hear it.  Since I mentioned Wolfe Street, I wanted to share that little amusing anecdote of my travels.

Getting back to the backroads though, they are a part of my own story - I am used to them, have traveled on them and lived near them most of my life, and for me there is a comfort, an endearing charm, with the backroads.  In many of my dreams, I see backroads - of course, in the dream world, they look a lot different but still as familiar to me as the real things.  I am not sure of why I dream of backroads - is there a meaning to them?  I tend to believe there is, but haven't totally sorted it all out yet.  Many of the dreams I have had about backroads have usually been pleasant, and there is a sort of security in them.  It could be that those backroads in my dreams symbolize I am secure and safe despite other things, and they could also be a coping mechanism for stress - many dreams are after all.  I have dealt with my dreams many times before, and I always take them seriously - dreams are a window into one's soul, and also serve as a sort of email from God in some cases to convey messages.  The scenery you see in dreams more than likely doesn't exist in real life, but in the dream there is a familiarity.  What is freakier though is that at certain times in life, you will travel to areas that look almost identical to what you see in dreams - that happened a couple of years back when traveling in Pennsylvania as a matter of fact.  They call that deja vu, but although it does happen it is still a mystery why we see places like this in real life later that we vividly dreamed about.  And, again it is the backroads.  

The charm of a backroad lies in its ambience - it is peaceful, aesthetically appealing, and embodies its own mysteries.  Especially if walking down a backroad, it gives you time to reflect, and even express those reflections in self-directed speech because no one else is around and you can be out there without anyone bothering you.  The solitude is a good way to clear one's mind, which is probably why God allows dreams of them for me.  If you travel the back road enough, you get to know it like an old friend, and it becomes a part of you whether you intended it or not.  I still remember as a preteen and even during my high school years, how I walked those back roads looking for things to harvest like fiddleheads or wild garlic, or going fishing at a favorite hole in the creeks that often ran alongside those roads.  As a younger kid, it was not uncommon to stop at those creeks, take off my shoes, and wade around in them looking for crawfish and other critters.  The simplicity of doing things like that is a precious memory, and there are days I miss that a lot. 

The simplicity of life often gets lost in the routines of our busy lives, especially when living in a large city like Baltimore, where the only wildlife consists of either flocks of pigeons congregating over the coffee shop I stop at each day on Eastern Avenue, or the rats that occasionally dive in and out of the litter-strewn alleys near Greenmount.  And, the rush-rush-rush of punctual clock-in times, meetings, and other junk that clutters our life (often without necessity) makes us forget.  We feel an emptiness, like we know we were not meant for this, and day after day of the same boring routines can be depressing.  God provides us those dreams to remind us that life is much more beautiful than the circumstances we are forced into many times.  And, the backroads remind us that the congested city streets are not who we are, nor are they were life ends.  We are more than that, and God seeks to remind us even in the little things. 

I have spent much time rambling about all this, but in all honesty I needed to.  The routines of busy life - especially in a large city such as Baltimore - can burn you out.  I have been feeling very disconnected lately, and as if a part of me is buried, and I want to rediscover that.  Maybe God can show me how to, and there are reasons we have these feelings.  And, there are reasons we have the dreams when our eyes close as our head is nestled in the pillows.  Perhaps tapping into that somehow would be an answer to the depression, discontent, and misplacement we can feel sometimes, and figuring out how to bring it all together is the next step.  Maybe I can find that at some point. 

Thank you for allowing me to share today, and I will see you next week. 

Observations This Week

 I was trying to decide what my thoughts would be this week, as I originally was going to begin a series on Christian morality based on what I am teaching my 11th graders.  A good orthodox Christian morality is necessary these days, as there seems to be confusion about certain things.   It is easy, for instance, for some people to take a Christian virtue and twist it around to advance an agenda - Pope Francis is unfortunately a master of this manipulation.  A lot of things go through my mind as I think about this, so I am going to wait until I have something more substantial to begin a series on Christian morality - I am developing a curriculum based on Fr. John Kiely's 1924 book, Instructions on Christian Morality, and there are still about 3 full months of the academic year left yet.  Given I was sort of tossed into my teaching responsibilities in the midst of the school year, I am having to develop a curriculum by flying by the seat of my pants.  Fortunately, my principal was a big help, as he obtained a copy of Fr. Kiely's book for me, so that is a plus.  The course as a whole is called "Sacraments and Morality," and the way it is structured is the first semester of the year deals with the Sacraments, and I had a textbook for that thankfully.  The second part of the year deals with Morality, and that is where it gets tricky - I don't have an actual textbook for that aspect of it, so I have to work on the proverbial fly to create something for it.  The school I teach at also wants to inject "social justice" into the curriculum, but I am doing my own spin on that to deflect the Marxist flavor of that concept from messing with Magisterial teaching.  Let me explain that further.

"Social justice" is essentially a term for soft-core Marxism, and often it is couched in religious language to make it appeal to Church people.  This was a contribution of notorious Marxist agitator Saul Alinsky in the 1930s, and somehow he managed to get his ideas injected into the platforms of some notable Catholic authorities then, including Jesuit theologian Jacques Maritain, who was a good friend of Alinsky's.  Having been challenged by my own parish priest to be a "beacon of truth," I am going to teach justice the way it should be taught - it is a cardinal virtue, and in its proper context it does benefit society.  However, that orthodox understanding of justice often stands in contrast with the "Social Justice" rhetoric of some leftist Catholics, in that they are not the same thing.  For one thing, while racism is a indeed a sin (and very demonic in many cases), the problem with many "Social Justice" advocates is that in the name of supposedly fighting racism, they in reality substitute one type of racism with another.  This makes "Social Justice" very unjust, and let me give you a preview of my class notes just to make the point.

The Decalogue (Ten Commandments) are divided into two parts.  The first three deal with how we relate to God (piety), while the last seven deal with how we relate to each other (justice).  Jesus summarized the law in Mark 12:31, and for centuries this "Summary of the Law" was a part of many historic liturgies.  So what happens when we emphasize one of these but not the other?  If one exercises piety over justice, then the result is a rigid religious legalism that is short on grace and heavy on judgment.  This is a major flaw of Fundamentalists when they attempt to evangelize others, and also is a characteristic trait of nations such as Iran.  On the other hand, if one emphasizes justice over piety, it results in ultimate tyranny.  Some of the most evil and destructive regimes in history (Hitler, Stalin, etc.) started out as crusades for justice.  However, their view of "justice" was to eliminate those who they felt were unjust against them, and thus they ended up being much worse than the regimes they supplanted. Was Castro in Cuba, for instance, any better than Batista whom he overthrew?  Ask many Cuban ex-pats who live in Florida that I know.  Many of them did not come here during Batista's regime - most came after Castro overthrew Batista's regime.  Castro was of course Communist, and Communism is at its core anti-Christian.  So, the "justice" proposed by Castro and his ilk was not true justice, as it tried to divorce God from true justice, and that never works.  Trying to destroy God's order in anything will result in disaster - the sin of the Enlightenment, for instance, was divorcing faith from reason, which to that point were understood to be complementary and not contradictory.  Therefore, again, here are the two points of this:

1. Piety without justice is legalism.

2. Justice without piety leads to tyranny, not true justice.

The lesson here is clear - we need to stop screwing around with the natural order God has created, because it only ends in disaster.  If only some secularized liberal religious people would get this message, true renewal may happen in our Church.  However, in all honesty, I feel our Church is headed for a major schism soon, and if that happens I will always fall on the side of the orthodox, and not the liberal apostates seeking to conform Christianity to their images.  And, yes, that includes Pope Francis.  Pope Francis is a legitimate Pope, don't get me wrong.  But, he is also a very bad Pope, and he has inflicted damage on the Body of Christ that will end up costing souls.  It is the duty of every faithful Catholic to pray for guidance in this, and also pray protection over themselves, as the forces of evil are all about.  The field is full of tares, and to separate them from the wheat at this point may destroy the harvest.  That is why we need a perfect guidance from God to navigate the whole mess.  

Thank you for allowing me to ramble again this week, and I will look forward to visiting again next week.  

Dealing with Misplacement

 After battling a nasty bout of flu that kept me out of work for over a week, I am on the mend.   The infection is all gone but left me with a nasty cough that acts up if I get overheated, and I am ready to shake that as well.  Being in convalescence at home for a week, I became glaringly aware of the fact that I have been feeling discontented a lot lately.  I almost dread starting a day now in many cases - I am not thrilled with the house I live in, and my job can be challenging at times, and don't get me started on those bus trips!  Fortunately, in the last day or so there has been a bit of a turnaround, but I still have a bit to go.  I wanted to sort of talk about that today, as it really has a lot to do with many things that have happened in the past few months.

I am at heart a small-town guy - I do my best in a small town, and my values and other attributes I share have small-town influence and roots.  But, I find myself in the middle of one of the largest cities in the country, and it has been an adjustment.  The pollution, the population density, and so many other mess with my basic sensibilities, and as a result I find it hard to adjust at times.  Now, this is not my first time living in a city by no means - I lived in the Tampa Bay area for several years, and even faced a few of the same issues there, but not on this scale.  And, I also was extremely happy to move out of the cities too.  The cities have their benefits - the mass transit system, access to shopping and so many other things, and a higher level of salary for work - but they also are not ideal.  A city is ultimately a good place to do work and business, but not exactly the most ideal living place.  While in time things will either adjust or get better, it has been almost a daily challenge to exist recently and I am coming to terms with that.  

Of all the issues I face in urban living though, perhaps ideological issues are one of the toughest.  I am fairly conservative, a traditionalist, and I also embody the values of an older generation.  Often, in the middle of a big city such as this one, there are problems such as political and religious differences, and whereas in most of America I would be the mainstream, in the middle of the city I feel like a proverbial fish out of water.  Even the Catholic school I work at is somewhat divergent when it comes to how we view things, as many teachers tend to be more liberal than me and I am having to guard my convictions in order to prevent risking castigation by both the co-workers in my school as well as many of the students.  At some point there has to be a breaking point, but if one happens I want it to be as genial as possible.  Any rate, in many instances it is also a type of spiritual warfare, as I am contending often for my own soul and I feel that if I let my guard down on even the most subtle of deviations, I could risk issues.  That is one reason I am back to reading Watchman Nee's book again.

This week's discourse seems like rambling on and on, but I wanted to announce what I am going to be doing.  As I am charged with teaching a course on Sacraments and Morality, one huge challenge to that is the lack of a good textbook - I have had to fly by the seat of my pants to design a curriculum, and so far I have a decent one.  I am wanting to turn those notes into some blog article lessons, much like what I did when I taught the adult Bible studies at St. Mary's in Winter Haven years ago.  So, over the next few weeks, I will begin composing a series of articles that give basic lessons on morality, and in doing so I can also refine how I teach these things to 11th graders.  Therefore, next week we will begin that series.

Thanks again for allowing me to share this week, and will see you next time.