For the sake of memory and hope for the future

Two families with 11 children in all living in one house that is very inadequate but all that is available in Quincy, Massachusetts, December 1940 in a photograph by Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress.

Coal miner, Colp, Illinois, January 1939 from an acetate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration, Library of the Congress.

Among the few remaining inhabitants of Zinc, Arkansas, a deserted mining town, October 1935 from a 35mm nitrate negative by Ben Shahn for the Resettlement Administration, Library of Congress.

The Ponderosa in West Virginia by Howard Horenstein

Maxwell Street, early 1950’s, Chicago by Marvin Newman

Salvaging coal from the slag heaps, Nanty Glo, Pennsylvania, 1937. 10 cents for

each hundred-pound sack. A photograph by Ben Shahn for the Resettlement

Administration, Library of Congress

Red House, West Virginia school truck, October 1935 from a 35mm 

nitrate negative by Ben Shahn, Farm Security Administration,

 Library of Congress

Greene County Fair, Greensboro, Georgia, October 1941 in a photograph by

 Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress

"Everything has been done so that you might become so many suns, sources of life (for others)..."

Photograph from Lynne Myfanwy Jones

"Everything has been done so that you might become so many suns, sources of life (for others). May you be perfect light before that immense ight. You will be flooded with its supernatural splendor. To you will come, limpid, direct, the light of the Trinity emanating from the One God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, to whom be glory and power forever and ever. Amen."---St. Gregory Nazienzen

Some Photos From West Virginia That Give Me Hope

The photos below come from the Friends of the Tug Fork River Facebook page. The eagles and the osprey that are showing up there indicate rebirth and renewal and the strength and blessings of nature in my mind. The recent rainfall has the water flowing deep and fast. And for some reason the railroad tracks and bridge in fall touch my heart with a feeling of peace and security. 

Photo by Chen Chengguang

Photo taken at Martha Moore Park in downtown Welch by Mark Kemp

This photo is by Dustin Estep

Andrew Ace Gess

Hope And Beauty

I lifted the picture below of the father and baby from the Virginia Lee Photography page on Facebook. It's one of my go-to places for beauty and hope and I have blogged about the great work done by Kristen Kennedy there several times on this blog. Please support her and her business if you're in Southwestern Virginia.

I'm sorry to say that I don't know where the other photos came from but I know that they're from Central Appalachia. Most likely I found them on the Appalachian Americans Facebook page. If these are your photos and you want me to take them down, just let me know.

 

Another look at healing: 'Dopesick' author focuses on people tackling the opioid crisis in new book 'Raising Lazarus'

This is another lift from National Public Radio, this time from their "Here & Now" show on August 30, 2022. Under discussion here is Beth Macy's book 'Raising Lazarus.'

The show that I'm focusing on here has to do with what gets called "the opioid crisis" and how we respond to that crisis and the people at Ground Zero in that crisis. I feel overwhelmed by it much of the time. Maybe you share my feelings. Over time I have opposed needle exchanges, and I have opposed legalization of drugs because I have believed that these signal social approval or surrender to something that is bad for people. I remember dope taking over communities in the early 1970s, and I continue to believe that that was used as a means of social control and to put a brake on organizing and protests.  

But this story confronts our lack of compassion and attention to what's going on, and I imagine that Beth Macy's book 'Raising Lazarus' does the same. I'm looking forward to reading the book. Some of what is discussed in this story touches upon what I recently blogged about when reviewing the book 'Dopamine Nation.' 

This is not abstract for me. I know people who struggle with opioid use, and if you're a working-class person you probably have family or live in a community that has been negatively affected by Big Pharma and doctors pushing pain meds and the illegal trade in these drugs. I come from an area of the country devastated by this and by the social conditions that created and gave room for this devastation. These drugs, and worse ones, seem to be the cause of some terrible suffering where I live now as well.

I'm ashamed of my past lack of compassion. I think that this interview makes a strong case for harm reduction rather than the policies that we have in place now. I'm still not in the legalization camp, and I'm not ready to fully embrace the author's view that "anything that gets people to care" is going to be a social good, but I do want to support a version of "barefoot doctors" in our communities, fully resourced, who "raise Lazarus" and get people on the road to recovery. In my mind, recovery entails some kind of progressive social action. It sounds as if Macy agrees with that to some extent. 

Macy is telling a true story, with all of the ambiguities that truth entails. As I said, I have not read the book, but it does sound as if she ultimately sees the story she is telling as one of healing and hope.    

Please listen to the NPR story here.

Here is an ABC news story on the book and author:    

Here is a publisher's video on the book:

"What gives you hope?"

The following quote is excerpted from the "Peter Maurin Farm" column by T. Christopher Cornell that appeared in The Catholic Worker of June-July, 2022:

A student asked me, "What gives you hope?" It was the second time someone of that generation has asked that, and I responded that I wasn't going to answer with any platitudes or take the easy way out. The answer was that I honestly had no answer. And I have pondered that since.

My answer now would be that hope is not an emotion, it is a choice. I hope because I have a conviction to do so. I hope because of a sermon here, a friendship there, a good deed done, a lesson learned. I hope because of an accumulation of experiences, some in community, some solitary, that have been lived in that hope. There is an echo of the catechism here, I don't think I made this up myself. The old way of expressing it was that hope is a theological virtue, and as such it grows when it is practiced. I'm not sure how that sounds to a twenty-something. But it was true in the sixties when I was born, it was true in the eighties when I was a twenty-something, it was true after September 11 and it is true now.

With war, inflation, uncertainty and disconnection threading through our thoughts, all I can conclude is that hope points us in the direction that I think is right.

"Our Children are a Gift From God" | Callie Greer #rolandmartinunfiltered

 

Understanding John 14:5-7 with Jim Palmer

The following comes from Jim Palmer's Facebook page and has been lifted without permission. I hope that readers will find Jim Palmer's Facebook page and engage with him.

Question: Jim, there's the verse where Jesus says, "No one comes to the Father except through me." I don't believe that verse anymore, but I don't know what to do with it.

Response: The entire statement attributed to Jesus in the Book of John reads, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

The message of Jesus to the world was that there is no separation between ourselves and the ultimate reality that is at the heart of all things, which we most experience as love, peace, happiness and belonging.

When Jesus said, "I AM the truth", he was saying that he was a human expression of this ultimate truth and reality. Jesus wanted humankind to know that we are not separated, divided, or in conflict with this transcendent reality we touch and feel deep within our hearts.

When Jesus said "no one comes to the Father except through me," Jesus was saying that the entire paradigm of separation - separation from love, separation from belonging, separation from worth, separation from hope, separation from wholeness - is a farce. We will never know these realities fully in that paradigm of separation, which requires striving to achieve them. The only way of knowing them is through the truth that Jesus demonstrated, namely that these realities are knit into the very nature and essence of our being.

The Christian religion often makes it difficult to understand verses like these because it built a religion based upon the separation paradigm, which was largely constructed by the teachings of Paul, who shoehorned Jesus into it.

The way the Christian religion interprets John 14:6 typically comes off sounding like this: "Listen up everyone! You know all those other religions and religious leaders and their teachings about God? Well, guess what? They are all deluded and wrong! It's me and my way or the highway to hell. You can only be right with God if [insert Paul's elaborate theology or denominational requirements for salvation]." That interpretation couldn't be any further from the truth of what was meant by these words of Jesus.
Jesus was basically saying, "You strive to be right with God, yet I have shown you that you and God are not separated but one. There is no other truth to invent or scheme up. Even if you tried, you could not ever come up with anything better than the way it already is."

Jesus said, “I AM the truth.”

He didn’t say “I KNOW the truth,” as if truth is a piece of knowledge held by the mind. Neither did he say, “I HAVE the truth,” as if truth is a possession you can pass along to another. Jesus said, “I AM the truth.”

Truth is a reality at the level of being.

Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is an actuality inside to be realized. What is this actuality? Oneness with God. This is your true Self.

Jesus is the Truth that God and humankind are one. This is the Truth that sets you free.

Hope that helps.
Jim

P.S.: The relevant verses from are here:

5 Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth* and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

7 If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

8 Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”

9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.

11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves.

12 Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

13 And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

14 If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.

This is what it means when a mine worker is killed at work...

Taken from the Forgotten Coalfields of Appalachia Facebook page on May 20, 2022:

16 years ago today changed our lives forever. Mike's brother, Billy; along with 4 other men were killed in a mine explosion at Darby Coal Mines. Mike received the call around 5:30 that morning. My heart broke for his sweet precious momma, I hated when she had to be told. She was never the same again.
Hold your family close and tell them that you love them every day, we do not have a promise of tomorrow.
Take care and God bless, love you all.
Prayers for each family affected.

And there is this:

On Prayer

These are the names of the people killed in Buffalo last week. I'm hoping that we will say their names as memory and as prayer for them and their families and their communities and as repentance for having allowed and supported violence and racism and classism.

 

Some wonderful random thoughts about God and life

 

The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston: "Our community is grounded in serenity, but not in passivity. It is a place where people can think, cooperate and take action..."

"Let us be clear: we are building a community. A place where people of all walks of life can come and be respected for who they are as people of value. We are constructing a haven for them, for ourselves, for any who will join us. Our community is grounded in serenity, but not in passivity. It is a place where people can think, cooperate and take action. We are an active community, intent on making a difference in this world. Our space is the vast expanse of the internet. Our agenda is peace and transformation. Our membership is no membership: only a welcoming hand to any who still believe in the power of love and hope."

--The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, Native American/Indigenous Ministries of the Episcopal Church

Encouragement for our Muslim sisters and brothers (and others)

 

Hope in hard and violent times...