Impeachment justice

The great movements for justice and equality over the past half-century have demonstrated that a legitimate moral imperative can confront and conquer unjust laws. That law is not the final arbiter of social justice.

Senators have all taken an oath to seek justice, and we will soon see whether is justice under the law or justice of moral integrity. Will witnesses be called to seek the truth, or will the Senate dance around legal games and ambiguities? Will Senators give up their personal integrity to cowtow to Mitch McConnell? Will Senators put Party above all else to save a President who has indicted himself in his own words and has disgraced the Presidency.

Republicans talk about this being a partisan process; but it takes the commitment of two sides to create partisanship. Republicans claim the people elected Trump, when the people chose Hillary and the Electoral College chose Trump. Republicans use all kinds of procedural maneuvers to deflect from the core truth.

Trump will undoubtedly be acquitted, but I hope he will continue to tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. And I am certain history will give him his due.

Slam dunk

It’s easy to get excited about a long pass on the football field or a slam dunk in basketball. They’re visual, they’re beautifully executed, and they’re good media. Society eats them up and pays up to see them. Athletes become celebrities.

Actors are celebrities who are visible and accessible to the public are well admired and compensated for what they do. Less celebrated and less visible in society are dancers, despite their endurance, athleticism and creativity.

But there are creative activities for which we only see the endpoint—as if all we needed to see was the last half-second of the slam dunk. We don’t see the intelligence, creativity and struggle that led to the work of visual art or the poem. Often we see nothing at all of the clever and profound mathematical proof or the beautifully designed scientific experiment that brings startling results.

These are slam dunks, too. It’s just that fewer people get to notice.

We need artists

If we are honest about the world we live in, we have to acknowledge how easily we can turn our backs on its brutality, cruelty and ugliness, how we fail to recognize the small beauties of the world, how we fail to see the our obligations as true humans.

This is why we need artists. They take on all of these concerns for all of us. Their art is a call to see the world through the lens of beauty, justice, humanity and joy—even found in a world troubled by darkness.

Empty Trump

Give Donald Trump all the gold in the world. Give him all the money in the world. Give him all the art treasures in the world. Give him all the wealth-producing properties in the world. Give him all the power in the world. Give him all the sycophants in the world.

Give him all of that. It won’t ever fill him up. He’s that empty. He has no clue, and no interest in understanding, what it means to be a true human being.

Miracles

In the Catholic Church, individuals can spend their whole lives as compassionate and sacrificing individuals, giving themselves constantly to the needs of others. Even after that, there must be miracles in their names for them to become saints.

But don’t we diminish our world when we believe that miracles are rare? The ability to look back billions of years in time is a miracle. The complex ecology that that surrounds a flower is a miracle. The living world deep down in the ocean is a miracle. The journey you take from conception to life is a miracle.

Imagine what the world be like if we saw it as not scarce, but rich in miracles? If we acted like we lived inside one big miracle.