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As I hear of children being separated from their parents, and parents and children being put into different detention centers; and see our country’s friends being insulted and made into enemies, and our country’s enemies being greeted as friends; and see editorial cartoonists being fired for portraying the truth of the madness; I stop and ask myself, where did we cross the line?

I was listening to Noam Chomsky the other day. He explained in his calm, reasonable voice that Trump is a distraction to keep us from noticing that the Republican Party is the greatest danger to the continuing existence of humanity. They might end us with nuclear weapons, or by their refusal to do anything about man-made climate change, which they know is real. In the Republican/billionaire/corporate universe, money and power are more important than leaving a world for their children and grandchildren.

After listening to him I felt the same way I did the first time I read that the mega volcano that is Yellowstone will erupt someday and destroy all life on the planet. Also the first time I heard that the sun will get bigger and burn earth to a crisp some billions of years from now. Also that when the Cascadia Fault finally slips, we are all going to be in deep, deep kimchi.

A little history. In my early adulthood, President Richard Nixon’s pettiness and paranoia led him to sanction illegal espionage. On the night of June 17, 1972, at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D. C., a security guard named Frank Wills noticed that a basement door had been taped to stay open. He called the police. When the police came, they found five intruders in the office of the Democratic National Committee.

The break-in eventually was traced back to the White House. Nixon resigned in disgrace on August 8, 1974.

I have often wondered if many of the guys involved in the scandal at that time felt mortified by the contempt in which they and the Republican party were held. I have wondered if they have been seeking revenge ever since.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected. All it took was the congenial actor and a little treason. I saw Reagan as a figurehead surrounded by a dark posse.

The first Bush was a steward for the Republican party.

Bill and Hillary Clinton made the Republicans lose their minds. First, they had to bash Hillary and her health insurance reform plan, and then they had to spend millions of tax dollars making Bill out as Satan incarnate for his sexual transgressions.

That was a case of many pots calling the kettle black.

And then eight years of George W. Bush, an affable dim bulb, smart enough to get elected and be dangerous. A guy who called himself a Christian as a campaign strategy. Another figurehead surrounded by a dark posse.

Looking back, I see that by the time W was in office, we had crossed the line. 9/11 happened, and that event was the pretext for everything that followed. I will not go into any conspiracy theories here. 9/11 happened, and it was horrible, and the Republicans made hay on the horror.

We went to war in Iraq. The Patriot Act was passed. Our rights were rapidly eroding.

By 2006, some people were beginning to compare the United States to 1930s Germany. At the same time survivors of the concentration camps during World War II were saying that it was already too late to leave America.

With the election of Barack Obama the racism that runs deep in this country rose up, loud and ferocious and out in the open and ugly as it ever was.

And now - the country is becoming safer for white supremacists, and bullies, and liars, and polluters, and people who think they can use the bible to justify ripping children away from their parents.

I saw a video of Jeff Sessions saying he was reading the “wisdom of Paul” from Romans 13, verse 1: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.” (NRSV) He was grinning like he’d just beat us at checkers.

This is the problem with ignoramuses quoting single Bible verses out of context to prove their points. If you go back eight verses to Romans 12, verse 13, Paul says, “Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.”

No bible verse is an island.

“Do what we say because God says to be subject to governing authorities.”

“I was only following orders,” did not cut much ice as a defense after World War II.

Vote this November. If we vote overwhelmingly for change, and it does not happen, we shall all understand better the nature of our situation, and, I hope, act accordingly. We aren’t dead yet.

Here Be Irreverence

My older son in recent years has become a born-again atheist. The other night he posted an infomercial on Facebook that featured Jim Bakker selling buckets of freeze-dried food labeled “Staying Alive.” Bakker is marketing this product to evangelical Christians in case they get hungry in the End Times.

I thought, wait a minute, won’t they be raptured up before they get hungry?

In case you missed the class, the Rapture will sweep all Christians up into the air with Jesus, first the dead and then the living. There will be seven years of Tribulation, extremely hard times on earth. At the end of the Tribulation, there will begin the Millennium, a thousand years of heaven on earth, at the end of which the Final Judgment will occur.

Sometime in this process, Christ will come again.

As in all things church, there are disagreements about these events.

Does the Rapture occur before, during, or at the end of the Tribulation? Before Christ returns, or at the same time? Does Christ return before or after the Millennium? Is the Millennium literally one thousand years, or is it “a really long time?”

I am an Anglican. We believe the Millennium is now, and it will go on until the second coming of Christ. We do not subscribe to the doctrines of the Rapture or the Tribulation. Neither do the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Lutheran Church, or many Calvinist congregations.

Anyway, Jim Bakker is making money from evangelical Christians who believe they will be hungry during the End Times, and my atheist son finds that hilarious.

FYI, back in the 1980s Jim and his then wife Tammy Faye had a televangelism empire. They made millions of dollars, had mansions and cars and an air-conditioned dog house, and they built a theme park called Heritage USA.

Alas, Jim was weak. He kept two different sets of books. He paid his secretary, Jessica Hahn, $290,000 hush money so she wouldn’t divulge that he and another pastor drugged and raped her.

The Assembly of God dropped him as a pastor in 1987. He was investigated, indicted, tried and convicted of mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy, and served almost five years of an eight-year sentence.

Tammy Faye divorced him and built a new life.

Bakker still owes the government $6 million, if you can believe the internet. He’s gone back to making money on television in the name of Jesus. Jim Bakker is the kind of person to whom my son points when he’s ranting about there being no God, and religion being evil.

I do not defend the perversions which have arisen from religion. I only point out that these perversions arise in the disarrayed minds and desires of human beings, not in the mind of God.

I speak of perversions ranging from Jim Bakker’s corruption to the horrible murders and atrocities that have been committed in the name of God, in Christianity and other religions, over the centuries. There are no excuses and I offer none.

Atheists often ask, “What kind of a God allows …?”

I think their point is that an all-wise, loving God would not allow war, famine, or diseases like ebola or AIDS, for example.

In my mind, I had to accept the randomness of creation – I don’t think everything is predestined. I think accidents happen. I think viruses are amoral, and like the boll weevil, are just looking for a home. I think that human beings are a chaotic mix of good and evil.

Human beings flatter themselves that they are the end-all and be-all of creation. “Made in God’s image,” and all.

Have you looked at the sky lately? Do you really think that we little scraps of DNA on this tiny rock are what everything is all about? If you truly believe in God, and that God created everything, and you realize that we human beings are incapable of wrapping our heads around everything, do you really think we’re the main point of the universe?

Maybe in God’s mind we’re on a par with viruses and trees and dogs. Maybe what is really made in God’s true image is the Golden Retriever.

I don’t argue with my son about the existence of God. There is no point arguing with someone whose mind is made up.

To me, God and reality are the same thing – too big, too beyond my imagination or mind to comprehend. The word “God” is a little box to contain the idea of something that is too immense to contain, or even imagine. Accepting that I’m not in control and I don’t know much is peaceful. If I can also do a little good, and avoid doing harm, bonus.

I agree with the Dalai lama: it doesn't matter if you believe in God, or Buddha, or whatever. What matters is that you live your life with decency, and kindness, and compassion. A lot of atheists put a lot of so-called Christians to shame on those scores.

Peace be with you. May we all someday enter the kingdom of Dog. I mean God. Maybe.

Requiem for Steve Self

The original Jesus Barn before it collapsed

The second day I was on Vashon Island in April 1972 I went to the baptism of one of the people who had invited me here.

We parked down by the Jesus barn and walked up the hill to a copse of trees which surrounded a pond. Several women in long dresses and men with beards and long hair were gathered there. The Jesus freak movement had swept the island.

The pastor dipped my friend into the chilly pond and my friend came up whooping and praising the Lord.

There were a few musicians at the side of the pond, one of them an elfin young man playing the flute. I would find out later that his name was Steve Self.

After I moved here I got to know Steve as a musician and friend. He played in various bands, including the Portage Fill, and smaller combos that played gigs on and off the island.

He also loved to sail, going out on the Sound in a couple of boats he restored.

In the mid-80s, Drama Dock put on a couple of Gilbert and Sullivan shows, and I was the musical director for both. We rehearsed the orchestra in the music room of the late high school, and one night after rehearsal I was noodling away on the piano there, trying to find a chord for a song I was writing.

Steve was working as a janitor at the high school then, because being a fine professional musician doesn’t exactly pay enough to support a family. He happened to come into the room on his rounds, and we got to talking, and I told him what I was working on.

He said, “Try this,” and named a chord and told me how to play it. Then, “Try this,” and another chord and how to play it. Then he kept naming chords and telling me how to play them, and each one was a slightly different shading of the sound and tone I was looking for. I had always respected him as a musician, but that night I understood why he deserved all that respect and more. He was the real thing.

After the janitor job ended, he started working as a house painter. One year he happened to get a job painting the house of Julia Lakey. They hit it off. I was honored to sing at their wedding.

In 1998, when my husband Rick was recovering from his first round of kidney failure, if his potassium levels got too high, he would become slightly delirious.

One morning Rick was slightly delirious, and my mother, who was partially deaf but wouldn’t admit it, was up from California visiting. I had one of them on either side of me, both talking nonsense. One of my sons had a doctor’s appointment, and eventually I had to go to work.

I was thinking, someday I’ll laugh about this, when Steve showed up at the kitchen door. He’d heard Rick was sick and was wondering if he could be of any help.

Could he!

Steve had everything straightened out in minutes. He took Rick and my son to the doctor, so they could both get what they needed. My mother settled down knowing she didn’t have to do anything. I went to my nice quiet job.

After that, no one could say a word against Steve Self in my presence. Not that anyone did. He was that good. He walked his talk.

Some years back Steve noticed he was having some tremors and movement problems. At first, he thought they might be caused by the paints and chemicals he used in his work, but then he got a diagnosis: Parkinson’s Disease.

The disease robbed him of the ability to work, and then to play music. He raged against Parkinson’s. Doctors tried various drugs. Some of them helped.

Then about three years ago he began having severe back pain and was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a treatable but incurable cancer on his spine. Chemo brushed that back for a while.

He kept walking, he kept fighting. He went to the Athletic Club to swim, to the Roasterie to hang out with friends, and to the Senior Center for lunch, among other things. He kept living.

Parkinson’s is progressive. Steve knew that. The cancer also progressed, and recently his oncologist told him that chemo was no longer working.

In April, Steve said, “Enough.”

“He was worn out by two unrelenting diseases,” Julia said.

Steve went into hospice.

On Sunday evening, May 20, Steve passed over into that fair land where the soul never dies.

Wishing you fair winds and following seas, Steve. How we shall miss you.