My Secular America

Posted on November 6, 2024 by Elaine

As I sit here grieving the results of the 2024 presidential election, I am also both angry and fearful that with this new regime, we we lose the very soul of our democracy. I fear that Mein Fuhrer (liar, hypocrite, felon, misogynist), among other fascist efforts, will try to “protect” women by trying to keep us (not me) barefoot and pregnant, catering to the pressures of his bases of “obsessive” Christians and Evangelicals. But the truth is, America was constructed to have a secular base, and once I did a great deal of research, documenting that fact.

Almost 20 years ago, I posted a piece on this blog about the roots of American democracy — a piece that now seems to be lost somewhere in cyberspace. I am reposting what I can glean, using a “Part 2” that I posted 6 years later and a response from a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, who (because she found on my post the information for which she was searching) said about me:

At the risk of offending the self-proclaimed Crone of Blogdom, I must admit what first came to mind: “Well, I’ll be damned,” I thought, “it’s just a little old retired grandma sitting there raising hell at the keyboard!” That wouldn’t be an altogether fair assessment of a rather accomplished career woman and crafty writer who truly has earned her Crone-Coronation, so I invite the reader to read her site for the rest of the story.

So, here (again) is the reminder that we need to keep fighting for the truth of what America stands for and was originally created to be: A Secular America.

Most folks do not remember (or perhaps never were taught) that our Founding Fathers used the structure of the Iroquois Confederacy to inform the creation of our Constitutional form of government:

The people of the Six Nations, also known by the French term, Iroquois Confederacy, call themselves the Hau de no sau nee (ho dee noe sho nee) meaning People Building a Long House. Located in the northeastern region of North America, originally the Six Nations was five and included the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. The sixth nation, the Tuscaroras, migrated into Iroquois country in the early eighteenth century. Together these peoples comprise the oldest living participatory democracy on earth. Their story, and governance truly based on the consent of the governed, contains a great deal of life-promoting intelligence for those of us not familiar with this area of American history. The original United States representative democracy, fashioned by such central authors as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, drew much inspiration from this confederacy of nations. In our present day, we can benefit immensely, in our quest to establish anew a government truly dedicated to all life’s liberty and happiness much as has been practiced by the Six Nations for over 800 hundred years

Now, speaking of our Founding Fathers:

The Framers derived an independent government out of Enlightenment thinking against the grievances caused by Great Britain. Our Founders paid little heed to political beliefs about Christianity. The 1st Amendment stands as the bulkhead against an establishment of religion and at the same time insures the free expression of any belief. The Treaty of Tripoli, an instrument of the Constitution, clearly stated our non-Christian foundation. We inherited common law from Great Britain which derived from pre-Christian Saxons rather than from Biblical scripture.

[snip]

Although, indeed, many of America’s colonial statesmen practiced Christianity, our most influential Founding Fathers broke away from traditional religious thinking. The ideas of the Great Enlightenment that began in Europe had begun to sever the chains of monarchical theocracy. These heretical European ideas spread throughout early America. Instead of relying on faith, people began to use reason and science as their guide. The humanistic philosophical writers of the Enlightenment, such as Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire, had greatly influenced our Founding Fathers and Isaac Newton’s mechanical and mathematical foundations served as a grounding post for their scientific reasoning.
A few Christian fundamentalists attempt to convince us to return to the Christianity of early America, yet according to the historian, Robert T. Handy,”No more than 10 percent– probably less– of Americans in 1800 were members of congregations.”

The Founding Fathers, also, rarely practiced Christian orthodoxy. Although they supported the free exercise of any religion, they understood the dangers of imposing religion. Most of them believed in deism and attended Freemasonry lodges. According to John J. Robinson, “Freemasonry had been a powerful force for religious freedom.” Freemasons took seriously the principle that men should worship according to their own conscience….

The Constitution reflects our founders views of a secular government, protecting the freedom of any belief or unbelief. The historian, Robert Middlekauff, observed, “the idea that the Constitution expressed a moral view seems absurd. There were no genuine evangelicals in the Convention, and there were no heated declarations of Christian piety.”

How about we let those Founding Fathers of ours speak for themselves about how they feel regarding mixing religion and government:

JOHN ADAMS:
→ I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved–the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! …in a letter to Thomas Jefferson.

→ But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed. …in a letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816, 2000 Years of Disbelief, John A. Haught

→ The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
→ Lighthouses are more helpful than churches. ….Poor Richard, 1758

→ The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason . ….Poor Richard, 1758

→ When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one. …. 2000 Years of Disbelief, by James A. Haught

→ Religion I found to be without any tendency to inspire, promote, or confirm morality, serves principally to divide us and make us unfriendly to one another.

THOMAS JEFFERSON
→ Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are serviley crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blind faith. …to the Danbury Baptist Association on Jan. 1, 1802;

→ Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and State. ….The Writing of Thoma Jefferson Memorial Edition, edited by Lipscomb and Bergh, 1903-04, 16:281

→…the legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. ….Notes on Virginia, Jefferson the President: First Term 1801-1805, Dumas Malon, Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1970, p. 191

→ …no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise..affect their civil capacities. ….”Statute for Religious Freedom”, 1779, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Julron P. Boyd, 1950, 2:546

I could go on and on. But I’m not about to try to teach historical facts to those people who obviously never got educated beyond what they’ve been told is in the Bible. Actually, the Bible doesn’t really mention abortion. “Of course, Christians can develop their own faith-based arguments about modern political issues, whether or not the Bible speaks directly to them. But it is important to recognize that although the Bible was written at a time when abortion was practiced, it never directly addresses the issue.” Full disclosure: There was a time when I was scheduled to get an abortion, but I miscarried the day before.

My Secular America doesn’t require that everyone believe that the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament are the rule of law of the land. My Secular America requires that every citizen abide by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. In addition to that responsibility, they have the right to embrace the Old Testament and its Ten Commandments, and/or the New Testament teachings of Jesus, or the teachings of Upanishads, or the Koran, or the Tao Te Ching.

As the PBS series The Meaning of America explained:

Beyond the symbolism of flag-waving and patriotic cliches lies the heart of American Democracy: our system of personal rights and human dignity. Conceived in rebellion against the absolute right of monarchs, the American revolution asserted that the people are sovereign, that they must be free to speak, to choose their leaders, to pray — or not to pray — as they wish. Messy, highly imperfect and in need of constant maintenance, it is a system that confers on us the priceless gift of human freedom.

Amen, amen, I say to that. As Vice-President Harris reminded us today, we need to keep fighting to keep America free of tyrannical rule.

The Truth About Aging

Posted on November 1, 2024 by Elaine

My thoughts on the challenges of aging bubble up after having read two pieces on the subject: the book Turning: The Magic and Mystery of More Days, written by a woman in her early 60s, and an article in The New Yorker, “Why We Can’t Tell the Truth About Aging”.

The book Turnings is a well-written conversation about how to prepare to enjoy getting older. It’s a great book to use as a stimulus for discussion, since it offers engaging exercises to examine what aging might have to offer you. But it is written by someone who has not yet experienced the realities of being truly “old”.

The New Yorker article, however, confronts the realities of aging with disturbing but necessary forthrightness.

There is, of course, a chance that you may be happier at eighty than you were at twenty or forty, but you’re going to feel much worse. I know this because two recent books provide a sobering look at what happens to the human body as the years pile up. Elizabeth Blackburn and Elissa Epel’s “The Telomere Effect: Living Younger, Healthier, Longer” and Sue Armstrong’s “Borrowed Time: The Science of How and Why We Age” describe what is essentially a messy business.

The so-called epigenetic clock shows our DNA getting gummed up, age-related mitochondrial mutations reducing the cells’ ability to generate energy, and our immune system slowly growing less efficient. Bones weaken, eyes strain, hearts flag. Bladders empty too often, bowels not often enough, and toxic proteins build up in the brain to form the plaque and the spaghetti-like tangles that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Not surprisingly, sixty-eight per cent of Medicare beneficiaries today have multiple chronic conditions. Not a lot of grace, force, or fascination in that.

A contented old age probably depends on what we were like before we became old. Vain, self-centered people will likely find aging less tolerable than those who seek meaning in life by helping others. And those fortunate enough to have lived a full and productive life may exit without undue regret. But if you’re someone who—oh, for the sake of argument—is unpleasantly surprised that people in their forties or fifties give you a seat on the bus, or that your doctors are forty years younger than you are, you just might resent time’s insistent drumbeat. Sure, there’s life in the old boy yet, but certain restrictions apply. The body—tired, aching, shrinking—now quite often embarrasses us. Many older men have to pee right after they pee, and many older women pee whenever they sneeze. Pipher and company might simply say “Gesundheit” and urge us on. Life, they insist, doesn’t necessarily get worse after seventy or eighty. But it does, you know.

When Socrates declared that philosophy is the practice of dying, he was saying that thought itself is shaped by mortality, and it’s because our existence is limited that we’re able to think past those limits. Time has us in its grip, and so we devise stories of an afterlife in which we exist unshackled by days and years and the decay they represent. But where does that get us, beyond the vague suspicion that immortality—at least in the shape of the vengeful Yahweh or the spiteful Greek and Roman gods—is no guarantee of wisdom? Then again, if you’re the sort of person who sees the glass as one-eighth full rather than seven-eighths empty, you might not worry about such matters. Instead, you’ll greet each new day with gratitude, despite coughing up phlegm and tossing down a dozen pills.

The one way to prepare for the challenges of being old is to develop a sense of humor that can help take the edge off stark reality. Judith Viorst’s book Unexpectedly Eighty seems to do just that. I haven’t read it yet, but I plan to. As I prepare for another gastroenterology test, I could use a good laugh.

The struggle to be heard.

Posted on October 25, 2024 by Elaine

To be “heard” is to be visible, to be acknowledged as valued and appreciated.

Today is the 55th birthday of my incredibly articulate late-diagnosed autistic son. Today he posted about marking the completion of his having to date traveled 32,120,000,000 miles around the sun.

His writing is thoughtful, moving, honest. But between his autism and what looks like is going to be diagnosed as a bad case of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, the only place he can hope to be heard is over the internet. He really needs to write his autobiography, but that’s a challenge I don’t think he can find the “spoons” to master.
He ends his post with this final poignant statement:

Thirty-two trillion miles is a long way to travel, and that doesn’t even include the miles accounted for by Earth’s rotation, let alone the rotation of our solar system around the galactic focus. That’s a lot of mileage I’ll be accruing even as my autistic and myalgic fatigue increasingly keeps me confined within a one-mile radius here in downtown St. Johns.

The passage of every mile, be it on foot or on orbit, subtracts a portion of life. I’ve already traveled a considerable portion of the way toward my death, and now I’m closing in on the reality that I mostly will move only as the planet carries me around the sun. So, then, maybe all of this is why I’m here, once again writing into the great and yawning abyss of the web: as my real geographies contract, perhaps I’m reaching—flailing, really—toward those ethereal, untouchable geographies.

For now, anyway. Until I quit on it again, or everything else up and quits on me. Which, at some point, it will, and must. As it will, and must, for everyone.

So it goes.

Here we go again.

Happy Birthday, Bix. I wish I had the magic that could take away your pain –existential and otherwise.

I found MY “happy pill”!

Posted on October 12, 2024 by Elaine

I’ve been on antidepressants on and off during most of my adult life. They would keep from getting too negative, but they never really helped me feel much better.

That’s because most prescribed antidepressants are “serotonin agonists”. Serotonin is one of the chemicals produced by the brain’s neurotransmitters that calms anxiety and keeps you from feeling negative and defeatist. A “serotonin agonist” is a substance that mimics the serotonin that your synapses are releasing to add to their effectiveness in instances when they have slowed down. (That is only a layperson’s simplistic description; I am not a doctor or scientist, but I’ve done a lot of reading about the process; a visual example is at the end of this post.)

It seems to me that, just as bodily functions cease to operate at maximum efficiency as we get older (and so we take statins and blood pressure meds etc.), the functions of the brain also slow down as we age. I posit that the lack of enough serotonin available to the aged brain can be the cause of so much of the depression we see in the elderly.

Now, not being depressed is not the same as feeling content and happy. I have discovered, for my purposes, that there is a pill for that.

One of the other chemicals produced by the brain’s neurotransmitters is dopamine, which plays a role in motivation and reward-seeking behavior. And that’s the happy pill: a “dopamine agonist” that helps the neurotransmitters and synapses create the dopamine necessary to have a positive effect on mood.

Now, why aren’t both serotonin agonists and dopamine agonists prescribed together? Actually, only recently, prescriptions like Abilify, which only partially deal with dopamine, are available. But they didn’t really work for me.

So now I take one serotonin agonist and one dopamine agonist.

And now I’m writing more, launched a national petition to improve senior housing, just organized a Drum Circle at my senior center, and took on a project to write an interview of the author of Turning: The Magic and Mystery of More Days

As promised, here’s a visual of how neurotransmitters work, using dopamine as an example:

Still plugging away.

Posted on October 8, 2024 by Elaine

I’m sending out Letters to the Editor and OpEd pieces promoting the petition to whatever publications I think might accept them. Please feel free to send your own Letter to the Editor to your own local newspaper. Meanwhile, inspired by “…they paved paradise and put in a parking lot…” from Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi.

Revenant

Under a dark moon,
she hunts the land for what
she cannot leave behind:

the scent of marigold
crushed on skin;
the fragile grace
of seedling maples;
the soft acceptance
of lambs ear leaves —

all lost to the dark,
to a place too ruined
for digging.

Tirelessly, she wrestles
the ghosts she has come
to free from the hold
of reluctant stone,

from the evil spell
binding the earth once
worked with the patient
need of her hands.

Held by the moment,
I breathe deeply
the sharp-scented air,
search for signs
of moon in the sky,

pray to find
what has been lost
from her night
and from my own.

“Don’t Look Up”

Posted on October 5, 2024 by Elaine

Actually DO look up “Don’t Look Up”, which is a movie currently streaming on Netflix.

It’s not your usual disaster movie, although it is about a meteor the size of Mount Everest hurtling toward Earth on a collision course.

I decided to watch it for the unexpected and notable cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blanchette, Jonah Hill, Tyler Perry, Ariana Grande, Ron Perlman, and other recognizable actors. One recognizable character was a take-off on Elon Musk.

I didn’t know what to expect from a “disaster” movie, and I’m not sharing any spoilers. Suffice it to say, the acting was superb and the message, well, you’ll get it loud and clear and real. I think that reviewers who didn’t like it missed the satirical point.

It might be me.

Posted on October 3, 2024 by Elaine

I’ve been searching to find out who might be the oldest continuing personal blogger in the U.S. Not a blogger who hawks services or products or is any kind of influencer. Rather, a female blogger who posts about her life and times. My search has yielded no information. I have been blogging since 2001, starting at kalilily.blogspot.com. Is there any woman out there older than I (84) doing the same thing?

Back in December of 2001, I blogged about why I started to blog. It’s worth reprising here:

So, there are some discussions going these days on about the purpose and value of weblogs. Oddly enough, the other night at my bi-monthly group meeting, I mentioned that I had begun a weblog, and I was asked to explain what that was and why I was doing it, and why I just wasn’t keeping a journal. As I’ve said, I’ve unsuccessfully tried keeping journals before and I write so much slower than I think that I got frustrated and quit. I can type almost as fast as I think (I got used to doing that at the job from which I retired last year, which involved mostly whipping out quick documents for others to share and claim as their own.) So, it’s easier to do it on the computer. And why don’t I just keep a journal on disk, I was asked. The truth is, I admitted, is that I’m used to writing for an audience. And I like having an audience. Even my poems are usually written with an audience (sometimes of one) in mind. It’s why I ballroom dance. I’m a performer at heart. I need ways to say to the world: this is who I am. Look at me. Pay attention. It seems to me that that’s at the heart of why everyone else who keeps a blog does so. In a world where we all have to live up to expectations and assume roles for survival purposes (our own and others) — caregiver, mother, employee, citizen — it’s so satisfying to have a place where one can BE who one is. Or in some cases, where one can BE who one wants to BE. It really doesn’t matter. We can create who we want to be or be creative with who we are. Either way, one has an identity, a voice. In a way, it’s kind of a new art form — or at least it can evolve in some cases into such. How cool is that!

My African Drumming Addiction

Posted on October 2, 2024 by Elaine

A couple of months ago, my senior center brought in a teacher of African Drumming, so I took the six Friday course, and loved it. He is back for four weeks now in October, and I can’t wait.

My daughter came and recorded the last session he gave so that I could practice at home. She said that I was the best one there, but, after all, many of the folks who were drumming barely had the strength to get a sound out of their drums, and their sense of the African rhythms was as weak as their hands.

I think my experience ballroom dancing helped a great deal to hone my sense of rhythm and my ability to improvise.

This new series starts this Friday, and I am psyched. I even made a t-shirt with an image with djembe drums.

I remember a little boy.

Posted on October 1, 2024 by Elaine

I remember a little boy
with a heavy brow
framing a careful gaze.

I don’t remember
where I lost him.
Maybe
it was at that fuel pump,
where I absentmindedly
drove off, only to see him,
in hindsight, running
down the road after me,
crying. Both of us
crying.

Maybe
it was during that
black and white
winter night, when
the only light was
moon on snow,
and I left him, alone
powerless, not knowing
that the dark house
would overtake him.

Maybe
I didn’t really lose him.
Maybe
it shouldn’t matter.

What matters is that
I still dream about
a little boy with
a heavy brow
and a dark gaze,
who is always reaching,
reeling, and running.

Massachusetts leads in funding for low income and accessible housing.