Quote of the Week

“Success has a thousand mothers, failure is an orphan.” – Anonymous

Fun with words

Ed: “Last I saw you were sitting on your lawn mower, crying your eyes out.”

Fred: “I was just going through a rough patch.”

 

Q: “Are those cowboys still saying they didn’t rob the glue factory?”

A: “They’re sticking to their guns!”

Quote of the Week

“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.” – Albert Einstein

Quote of the Week

“Desperate times call for desperate measures. After all, this country was founded by desperate people.” – Jason Bull, CBS TV series Bull

A Pope and a President – The two sides of the Twitter coin!

What do Pope Francis and President Donald Trump have in common? They both have a social media presence. Specifically, they both use Twitter to reach out to their followers. However, the similarity ends there. You could not have two more divergent tweeting styles than these two individuals.

I’m not talking about specific content. We all know that the Pope would not tweet about the Russian investigation, and Trump would not tweet about matters of scripture. What is so diverse is the style, the approach, and the reasons each has for using this specific social media platform.

President Trump loves to get up in the middle of the night and dash off a tweet. In fact “dashing off” a tweet is his signature style regardless of whether it enhances or debases the message he’s planning to send. The Pontiff, on the other hand, has a staff who culls tweet worthy messages for him to use. However, they do not send it for him until he has reviewed it. Nonetheless, you would never find him sitting at his desk after dinner and spontaneously sending a tweet!

“Some people can be good on Twitter, and other people can realize that Twitter brings out the worse in them,” he [Bishop Paul Tighe] said. Quoted in American Magazine, January 8, 2018 – Following Francis: The Pope’s Social Media Ministry Takes Off

Wouldn’t it be nice if President Trump took this quote to heart. We’d have a lot less controversy running through the White House these days.

Although the Pope doesn’t tweet about politics specifically, he does comment on topics that impact humanity across the globe: a 2017 tweet dealt with “welcome migrants and foreigners”, and one in 2015 was about the earth looking like “an immense pile of filth.”

According to the social media analytics group, Twiplomacy, from 2013-2015 the Pope was the most influential global leader on Twitter. In 2016 he became number four, knocked out by, you guessed it, candidate Trump! The Pope and the President continue to battle it out for the title of most followed global leader on Twitter, though Trump has consistently taken the lead since last summer. Both men have over 40 million followers but they both still have a long way to go to catch up with pop stars Katy Perry’s 108 million followers and Justin Bieber’s 104 million followers!

 

Refugees, Invaders, or Pilgrims? – what’s in a word?

What’s in a word? The words we use to describe people, events, or our environments ultimately color our view about them. In my previous blog post, Facing An Invasion, I investigated how the word “invader”, applied to the immigrant/refugee caravan on our southern boarder, colors our attitudes toward these people. In this posting I would like to explore applying to them the word “pilgrim”.

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines a pilgrim with a small p as one who journeys in foreign lands; one who travels to a shrine or holy place as a devotee; The Oxford dictionary also adds: A person traveling to a place of particular personal interest i.e.“thousands of pilgrims converged in Memphis for the 16th anniversary of Presley’s death”

We all know that a pilgrim with a capital P refers to the one of the English colonists settling at Plymouth in 1620.

My question is: can we consider the people trying to enter our country as pilgrims?

I came across a fascinating interview of an author who wrote a book around the topic of how the immigrants of today mirror the Pilgrims of yesteryear.

In British author Rebecca Fraser’s book, The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America, she addresses the question of why the Pilgrims left their home country. Just like the immigrants of today, she says they were treated with disrespect and forced to live in hovels and take low-level jobs that nobody else wanted. She also makes the point that many of today’s refugees from other countries are surgeons and doctors and lawyers who have nothing to show for their status in their home country. Like the Pilgrims they came here fleeing oppression, leaving not only material goods behind but also their entire way of life and identities to start over in freedom. (Interview by Randy Dotinga for the Christian Science Monitor, November 20, 2017 https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2017/1120/How-do-the-Pilgrims-relate-to-immigrants-today)

(yes, yes, I know, most of the “refugees” camped on our boarder are not doctors or lawyers, but like the Pilgrims, they are fleeing intolerable situations in their home countries be it political or economical.)

In another article, American Spirit, The Pilgrims Were the Original Refugees, Michael Daly writes for the Daily Beast:

“In that sense, all the refugees who followed,[the Pilgrims] the Irish and the Jews and the Syrians and the rest, have been pilgrims. And all these pilgrims have given thanks of some kind, if not a historic feast of wild turkey and venison, then at least a heartfelt sigh of relief.”

He also recounts the Elmaris family from Syria’s journey to the United States, saying, “They then set to building a new life with the spirit that has always made America great [my emphasis], the spirit of the refugees who have come here.” 11/25/15 https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-pilgrims-were-the-original-refugees

The immigrants and refugees of the 21^st century are indeed on a journey to something holy. They are seeking America’s most scared and holy value “freedom”.  Robert Cushman, a church leader, in a famous sermon, said immigration was a solution if there was nowhere for people to exercise their talents, which he called “that knowledge, wisdom, humanity, reason, strength, skill, faculty, etc. which God hath given them.”

Our modern immigrants/refugees are fleeing from threats to their lives, and oppression for their beliefs. They are seekers of a higher, good freedom, and even those who are uneducated are seeking a better economic existence being willing to take the lowest level jobs our country has to offer. Doesn’t that meet the definition of pilgrim with both Ps?

However, if you want to do a rebuttal to this posting, do a Google search on “pilgrim vs immigrant”. You’ll find lots of information to back up an opposing viewpoint!

A relevant Quote from Mother Teresa

I have just begun to read a book of quotes from Mother Teresa. This one stood out because of what is currently happening politically in our country: “I believe that politicians spend too little time on their knees. I am convinced that they would be better politicians if they were to do so.” Many people in our great country are suffering because of the government shutdown. What will happen to the poorest of the poor when rent subsidies are cut off and food stamps disappear? Just think of all the good she did in this world. Maybe our egotistical president along with our representatives should follow this advice from Mother Teresa. We’d all be better off.

Quote of the Week

“History repeats itself until people decide not to let it.” – Roxane Gay, The Moments That Mattered, Vogue magazine, November 2018