Jots and Thoughts of Jenny

No election is the end of the world until...well, the world actually ends. If we're all still alive tomorrow, we should all do our very best to make sure everyone around us also stays alive through the next day too. And the next day. And the next. The most important election is the next one, in the sense that we no longer have control over the past, but we do have control over the future.  Don’t get me wrong. This election has been incredibly stressful on a lot of levels for many people, and I don’t want to minimize the very real mental and emotional toll it has taken, and may yet take. I also don’t want to minimize the very real physical consequences that will occur once it is over. No matter what happens, we will have a president of the United States who many people in the country vehemently oppose. (And if you have a hard time believing that, try getting outside of your own echo chamber for a little bit and recognize that there are real people with real problems who support both...

You're hanging on a creaky rope bridge hanging over a deep ravine. You look down briefly and gulp, wishing you hadn't. Deep breath in, close your eyes, count to ten. You try to calm your racing heart to no avail. Taking stock, you notice that the next several boards are completely missing, which is not reassuring since you just jumped onto your current board as the previous few disintegrated under you. Stuck. The breeze blows gently, rustling your shirt and hair. On solid ground, that would feel nice, a brief respite from the heat of the day. Now, it only feels terrifying. But what's that? Ahead of you, past the bridge on the other side, you see a friend! Elated with relief, you call out to him. He runs towards the bridge, shocked by your plight. He starts calling suggestions, and you desperately try to process everything he's saying. Just then you hear another voice behind you. Palms sweaty, you turn gingerly, trying not to sway the bridge too much as you look around. ...

To make sense of the next blog post that's stewing in the back of my head, I need to give a little background. Can we stop calling people "good people" the way we do right now? What's that phrase even supposed to mean? I don't think there are many people on earth who are actually straight-up evil. As a result, a "good person" in our nomenclature has become most commonly someone who looks like us, perhaps as an extension of that, someone who makes similar mistakes as us. Then when it turns out a "good person" behaved in a way that we disagree with, but not too strongly, we say, "Oh, but they're a good person," as in, "This isn't that big of a deal." Or, if someone tells us that individual has done something we really don't agree with, it becomes, "I just cannot believe they did that. They're a good person," almost as though your opinion of them as a good person makes them above any such mistakes. Or ...

I've got a set of three blog posts bottled up that are related to our upcoming election in the United States, but I'd prefer to keep them all as non-partisan as I can. I don't mind sharing my views (feel free to ask--some of them will probably be easy to discern anyway), but I'm actually sort of sick of seeing the partisan fighting, and so I'm going to try doing what I've been told is always a good idea in writing: writing the blog post(s) I wish I could read right now. Last night I listened to a panel discussion from three well-respected and fairly impressive journalists that I thought was supposed to be about race and democracy. To be fair, they did address that topic somewhat, and I appreciated some of the points they made. However, an awful lot of the panel discussion ended up being a rant (from all three of them) against a particular candidate. And this ranting was (mostly) on-topic, and for the most part I felt like what they said was fair, so I mostly tri...

This week I had two heart-rendingly difficult communications with friends who I admire and respect about the subject of racism in the United States. I’ll start with the second. My friend told me that she just felt hopeless. That she didn’t see an end. That she didn’t see a solution. That she had been so badly hurt by the members of the church that we both belong to and believe holds the truth that she couldn’t bring herself to attend anymore. This isn’t someone who is weak, uneducated, seeking power, or angry with people who are trying their best. This is someone who is strong, intelligent, educated, humble, and sincere. And she feels hopeless because she knows that in a month (or less), people like me will have moved on and stopped listening. How could I have been so blind to her pain? Especially when I consider myself a disciple of Christ, to whom this friend is every bit as valuable as myself? Before I explain the other conversation, I have to say that this friend is practically a ...