I’ve been nurturing the prejudice that the so-called Enlightenment is responsible for the mess of today’s American “democracy.” The truth is, we’ve never followed through.

The Enlightenment I’m referring to is the economic, intellectual, and social movement that emerged in Western Europe in the early 18^th century. Scientific investigation, industrial and technological developments, and laws governing the interactions of workers and owners began adding up to what we’ve come to view as modernization.  During that time, Religion lost its power to illuminate humanity’s Ultimate Concerns (let’s say) as Reason stepped in. A few names associated with the Enlightenment include Descartes, Newton, Spinoza, Kant, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Voltaire.

The American experiment, as some call it, was launched in the late 18^th century on the coattails of men who subscribed to Enlightenment ideas. On fire with the opportunity to establish something new in human history, they prosecuted a shooting war for independence and a war of words for the re-creation of democracy from an ancient model. As a consequence, laden with its ideals and its flaws, we’ve rolled with the fruit of Enlightenment down these two hundred years. Or rather, lumped along with it.

In the light of my short lifespan, it appears to me that Enlightenment philosophy has come to mean something less than its lofty and humane ideals. In brief, the principle of self-determination has come to mean “do-as-I-please individualism.” Liberty is perverted to “every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.” Compassion is denigrated as “socialism.” Science is set in opposition to Faith, and faith has taken a literalist spin in defense of God (who didn’t need defending) and dug in its dogmatic heels. All this adds up to endless divisions among people supposedly devoted to the common cause of democracy–that is, to the value of each and every voice.

The Enlightenment may have set the human mind free from superstition and the fear of natural forces.  The Enlightenment may have opened minds to the doubts and questions that energize science.  The Enlightenment may have broken the bondage of hereditary tyranny in Western Europe.  What The Enlightenment did not do was bring about liberty and justice FOR ALL in America. After two hundred years, we’re still struggling with how to do that.

Where we have most failed, in my opinion, is in public education.  We’ve edited our own history down to a mythology.  We’ve utterly devalued the calling of teachers.  We’ve let the infrastructure of schools from the nursery to the university decay and crumble.  We’ve lowered the expectation of learning from critical thinking to picking right answers.

No one has time in this complicated world to learn all the answers.  But everyone has the capacity to ask creative questions. Everyone deserves a door to opportunity. We must teach those two fundamental languages: words and mathematics.  We must encourage curiosity over success.  We must support the many paths to life-sustaining work for all kinds of minds, all kinds of abilities.  We must determine to pay for all this out of our national abundance, dreamed in the hearts and built on the backs of people “yearning to breathe free.”  Wealth hoarded at the top is worse than taxation without representation.

Time for some real enlightenment. Liberty and Justice and Education for all.

Almost 30 million Americans have contracted Covid-19. More than 540,000 have died. Yet still, a substantial number of folks doubt those numbers. They doubt that mask mandates, lockdowns, and school closings are necessary. They doubt that vaccines should be imposed on them, because they have a right…to their doubts.

Apparently, no one they care about has died.  No one close to them is suffering from mysterious lingering symptoms.  No one should be concerned that variants of the virus are causing surges in illness and death around the globe. Apparently, no one they don’t personally know matters. They believe they have a right to think and do as they choose.

I lean toward the feeling of a recent online correspondent:  I’m glad I’m old.  That is, I don’t have to look too far into the future and face up to the consequences of other people’s doubts and rights.

When I was a girl, I saw pictures in, say, LIFE Magazine, of children confined—perhaps for life?—in large steel tubes with only their heads exposed.  These machines were called “iron lungs.” They enabled people afflicted with polio to breathe.  Perhaps today’s version is a respirator: less bulky, but no less restrictive.

When I was a girl, scientists perfected a vaccine for polio. We lined up in school to take a sugar cube soaked with a pinkish liquid on our tongues. As far as I know, all children still receive this vaccine. Polio doesn’t happen to American children anymore, because, well, a vaccine. Similarly, smallpox, measles, whooping cough, and a handful of other diseases no longer kill, disable, and disfigure children. Will those folks claiming their right to avoid vaccination for Covid-19 extend their doubts and rights to these other immunizations as well?

Covid-19 and its variants will not go away. Many of us still welcome our annual “flu shot” which helps mitigate the possibility of serious illness from whatever variant of the “ordinary flu” happens to come along that year. The protection isn’t perfect. Mother Nature is clever at creating new attacks on human life. I’m not required to get that flu shot by the government; but organizations I volunteer with insist on it—not necessarily for my protection, but surely for the protection of those I help and serve.  Doesn’t this seem like common sense, common decency, common human compassion?  Whatever happened to those values in today’s America?

I’ve always claimed to believe in Human Rights. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and others more specific, are enshrined in the US Constitution with its Bill of Rights. Now it seems that “my” rights and “their” rights clash daily in the headlines, sometimes with violence, and sometimes via legislation or judicial decisions.  Do human beings really have rights?  Possibly not.

All ancient wisdom texts contain a variation on this saying: Do not do to someone else what you would not want them to do to you.

Now…imagine. (Human beings are the only animals, as far as we know, who have the power to imagine.)

Imagine that you personally know every victim, every refugee, every criminal, every corpse.

What are your rights?

I’m giving up religion for Lent. There. I’ve said it. The next forty days or so, I can devote my theological study hours to something comprehensible, like Bitcoin or The United States Constitution or Virus Data. Just kidding. Sort of.

Religion has been among the most disappointing of human interventions for understanding the mystery of life. Nothing human can be perfect, I know, but surely we could have prevented ourselves from spoiling, almost without exception, the enlightened discoveries of certain historic individuals, like Buddha and Abraham and Ahkenaten and Zoroaster and Jesus and Muhammad and Akbar. Their respective insights concerning the Ineffable were brilliant and beautiful. The religions that grew up after them? Not so much.

It doesn’t help that I’ve been reading Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste. Her descriptions of how the legacies of certain beliefs around the world have perpetrated inhuman suffering make my stomach churn, even though it isn’t news to me. I also launched into a “cover the whole book in one year” reading schedule of the Bible, a personal refresher course, only to find myself, this month, in bloody Leviticus. Obviously, any sacred text requires interpretation. But it’s hard to read these ancient Hebrew scriptures knowing that certain “believers” today describe this entire book as word-for-word, straight from the mouth of God orders for life. If this scripture was what Jesus grew up learning, I wonder how he ever managed to proclaim “God is love.”

As a girl, I lived in a Buddhist country, a Muslim country, and a Roman Catholic country. As a docent in a major art museum, I’ve delved into the iconography of religious traditions from China and Ancient Egypt and India. As a practicing Protestant Christian since childhood, I’ve worshiped and studied in several denominations, from Dutch Reformed to Southern Methodist to Presbyterian (PCUSA sect). And I’ve attempted to practice, from time to time, forms of spirituality in the Roman Catholic tradition. I’m only in my 75th year of age, so perhaps there’s still time for me to discover the final answer.

But for Lent this year, I think I’ll let go of religion. I’m going to try to grab on with clarity to the free-form faith that God, by some name or other, or no name at all, has a love for creation—the earth and everyone and everything on it—an absolute love available for humanity to participate in. For that, we just need some humility, some gratitude, some wonder, some mercy and generosity towards every other being, animate or inanimate, as evoked in Robin Wall Kimmer’s love-filled book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

I’m not doing religion, at least for now. But I’m not giving up on Jesus, whose forever presence as Christ in the world originally and truly revealed to humanity the message of compassion over judgment, servanthood over power, love over death. That’s a message I’m not giving up.

A story about myself I’ve often retold was provided by my father.  He recalled the time when he heard a six-year-old voice pipe up from the backseat of the car.  The middle sister of three asked the question:  “Daddy, where do they get the things to make the things to make the things to make the things….?”  At that moment, says my dad, “I knew I had a philosopher on my hands.” Indeed.  Getting down to causes might be considered the essential issue of philosophy, beginning with Thales in c. 580 BCE. (see note)

Even so, it never occurred to me to study philosophy as such until my senior year of college. Among my friends at the Wesley Foundation (Methodist hangout) was a coterie of older girls endlessly arguing about things like a priori and a posteriori. I admired them a great deal, and understood them not at all.  So, with a block of hours to spend on anything, I signed up for Intro to Philosophy. I might have been seriously risking my grade point average.

The course was taught by Professor Sevin Kunt, a petite woman of Indian heritage who had the gift of making things clear. I’d study the assignment from Herodotus or Hegel or whomever, entirely befuddled, until, in class, she announced, “Let me help you make the distinctions.”  And she did. Ideas clicked into place, at least for a time.  Dr. Kunt once allowed that she fell in love with her husband-to-be when he said, oh so romantically, “I worship the ground on which you make distinctions.” He was right about that. In addition to helping me learn how to think, the professor won my forever gratitude when she returned my final paper. It was, I noticed in later years, a rather naïve defense of my Christian theology at the time. Dr. Kunt had nothing to say about the particulars of my belief, only this:  You have answered the essential philosophical questions.  She gave me an A.

Early in life, with this undercurrent of philosophical speculation, I began to express my thoughts and ideas in the form of poetry. I didn’t “intend” to be a poet. That’s just the way it came out. I liked some poets, and some poetry, and I discovered that my teachers did, too. Good for brownie points. (eg. “Why I Daydreamed in History Class” dedicated to Mrs. Vann at Greenville High School.) A poem could be short. Rhyme and meter were fun. I wasn’t good at making up stories, but I was good at looking around at nature, for example, and putting two and two together to make infinity, as in metaphor and other imagery.

My poems that survive in my books and in my portfolio are about telling the truth: This is what I saw. This is what it felt like. What does it mean?  In the end, the meaning is left up to the reader.

Turns out that simply seeing things and speaking the truth is also what prophets do. Poems from early in my writing life continue to speak, if only to me, in new ways. They are truthful and meaningful in ways I did not necessarily appreciate or anticipate at the time I wrote them. They are timeless as documents of experience and insight.  That is what could be called a prophetic voice.

I wrote poems as they came to me, often in a rush of “inspiration.”  In fact, after decades of work as a poet, I think the poems that come “in a rush” are my best.  “A rush” also describes the way I end up with blog posts like this.  The impulse to say something comes to me so strongly that I can’t get on with anything else until I write it down.  I think it’s a form of addiction:  the urge, the high, the relief of writing.

Call it what you will,  the voice of the universe sometimes speaks to me. I don’t decide what or when. I merely transmit it as best I can.  Over a lifetime, I’ve collected the tools—words, grammar, history, experiences—and I use them to make the transmission as clear and truthful as I can.  Philosopher, poet, prophet.  Same thing.  I was born that way.

As to the original question that came out of my six-year-old mouth: I might have grown up to be a physicist had my dear old dad (or anyone) been able to make me love math.

Note: My go-to book for understanding Western philosophy is my 1988 copy of Looking at Philosophy: The Unbearable Heaviness of Philosophy Made Lighter by Donald Palmer, teacher and humorous illustrator.  You can still find it in updated editions.  Recommended.

Fear is the enemy. How many times have I written about that on this blog?  From the Bible* to FDR**, warnings against the power of fear have been my persistent theme in support of unity, security, and progress.

A New York Times essay by Sabrina Tavernise (January 29, 2021) derives from the experience of a professional woman and mother caught up online in the conspiracy theories of QAnon.

Mr. Trump may be gone from government, but Ms. Perron believes that the ground is still fertile for conspiracy theories because many of the underlying conditions are the same: widespread distrust of authority, anger at powerful figures in politics and in the news media, and growing income inequality.

Unless there are major changes, Ms. Perron said, the craving will continue.

“Trump just used us and our fear,” she said. “When you are no longer living in fear, you are no longer prone to believe this stuff. I don’t think we are anywhere near that yet.”

In America now, we have moved from fear of “Big Government” sucking up resources and regulating our lives to the fear that people with guns will invade the Capitol and murder members of Congress.  Oh wait.  That’s not just a vague “fear.”  That actually happened.  Through the power of lies and gossip and fear, it could happen again.

As a citizen of this country, what are you afraid of?   Name it, please.  Name the fear and name the agencies and individuals causing or promoting that fear.  What you can name, you can take civil steps to confront: by your voice, by your vote, by your refusal to let fear blind you to your power—your power to take action in ways other than violence.

How does the idea of health care for everyone cause you to fear?  How does the right of every citizen to vote cause you to fear?  How does access to abortion cause you to fear? How do efforts to advance the cause of environmental protection cause you to fear?  How does public education cause you to fear? How does a group of people not like you cause you to fear? You might try substituting the word “Why?”

Freedom is pretty good notion, embraced by our Constitution as “liberty.”  Yet most people do not rear their children with unlimited liberty.  Your toddler can’t be trusted to stay out of the cookie jar, the medicine cabinet, or the busy street. Nor should we think that liberty without limits is good for a nation.  Ramp that up to government officials, industrial czars, thugs with guns, and religious enforcers.  Lines have to be drawn, with compassion, common sense, and a view to future life.  When the lines of love are clear, fear gives way to freedom.

Fear not.  Figure out what and whom you love.  Put your priorities of love to work in positive ways to make those major changes that will be good for us all.

*I’ve read that the phrase “Don’t be afraid” or some variation of it appears in the Bible 365 times—good counsel for every day of the year.

**Famously, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” FDR–1933 Inaugural Address

As soon as I came upon Senator Josh Hawley using the word “irregardless” I knew the jig was up for him. Anyone who abuses the English language like that doesn’t deserve to be a leader in America.

Okay, okay. I’m speaking in hyperbole. There are many more significant reasons why the above-named demagogue doesn’t deserve to be a leader in America. However, I’m thinking that the erosion of civility in our country arises directly from the fact that millions of people evidently do not fully appreciate the meaning and power of the words they read and hear and thoughtlessly toss off. Here’s an example from a news account of the recent violent occupation of the nation’s Capitol by thugs and idiots.

One man who made his way into the Senate chamber reached Pence’s chair on the Senate dais. [He]… left a note on the vice president’s desk that read in part, “it’s only a matter of time, “justice is coming.”… [The man]— who has been charged with two felonies, including threatening congressional officials — told investigators he was glad to reach Pence’s desk because he believes the vice president is a child-trafficking traitor, but said he did not mean the note as a threat. [boldface mine]

By “justice” did he mean, “Honor and respect for the legally affirmed election of Joe Biden as President of the United States” or did he mean, “Hang Mike Pence”? I don’t have to think too hard: in this situation, the words the man used were a threat.

In the coming weeks, there will be plenty of parsing over what people “actually meant” when they said what they said. As in the dim political past, we’ll be asked to give thought to “what ‘is’ is” or similar statements. Pundits will argue about what was said, who said it, what the words did or did not mean, and whether or not these consequences were driven by those words.

Pundits have permission to quibble. Pundits (and poets) know very well how to use words. They can create what we call “spin,” that is, interpretative flavor. They can weave thoughts into powerful metaphor. They can articulate word pictures that slam home an emotional experience. Shaping language to serve a particular purpose isn’t the same as outright lying, although lying, too, is a keen skill of some writers. In any case, professional writers, whether in fact or fiction, choose words with intent. They know what they are saying. So do internet “influencers.” But what about those thugs and mobs, with their slogans, chants, and signs? Merely saying, “I didn’t mean it that way” doesn’t let them off the hook.

Chuck Wexler, director of the Police Executive Research Forum, said this: “This is an evolution ….What happened at the Capitol the other day is new territory. Going from freedom of speech to participating in a riot where a police officer dies, that takes it to a new level.”

Words—the spelling, the meaning, the impact—are universally abused in today’s media environment, often in fewer than 280 characters, including spaces. It’s so easy. People forget not only how to be civil but also how their words, intended or not, can make things happen.

What constitutes “free speech” will depend a great deal on how we as a nation choose to respect the power of words to inspire, inform, indoctrinate, and sometimes, incite.

“The pen is mightier than the sword.” Remember that one?