Malice in Wonderland, part three

Happy Halloween!
"... Democrats are the party of anti-Western Marxists
and hostile third world migrants." Donald Trump,
October 19, 2026. (Source of graphic.)

The context: The USA's midterm elections.

In Malice in Wonderland, part one, I analyzed a sample of MAGA rhetoric regarding immigrants.

In Malice in Wonderland, part two, I considered MAGA's "gleeful cruelty."

In what I sincerely hope is the last in this series of posts, I'm simply sharing what the U.S. president and his defenders consider acceptable speech in the service of their current political campaigns. 

A couple of the more flagrant insults in this recent speech were covered in the media, but they're so accustomed to performances like this that you need to read a little more to get the full scale.

My original draft of this post included a couple of paragraphs of brilliant commentary. However, I deleted them as totally unnecessary. The transcript speaks for itself.

So here is the president of the USA at Park City, Kansas, three days ago: (based on this full transcript)—judge for yourself if you think I've been unfair in picking these gems. I did edit a bit, mainly by comparing transcripts and making my own paragraph divisions. Within paragraphs, the ellipses ... were in the original transcripts and don't represent cuts made by me.)

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When you see burning steeples and raging fires in France, just remember that is what the radical Democrats want to do to America. They expect to do it. They’re not going to come close. And just like in Europe, Democrats are the party of anti-Western Marxist and hostile third world migrants.

And the Dumocrat agenda, and I’ve used this name a lot because their policy is just so dumb. Men in women’s sports, transgender for everybody. The absolute mutilization of your children where your son, Timmy, comes home five days later as Sarah, and you don’t even know about it.

They have open borders so that every jail throughout the entire… From The Congo in Africa to all over South America to Asia and Europe, every jail can be dumped into our country. Murderers, drug dealers, everybody. We’re not putting up, and we never did, and we got them mostly the hell out of here. What a mess that has been. But the Democrat agenda is a plan to extinguish Western civilization.

The worst thing they did to us is allowing 25 million people into our country totally unchecked, totally unvetted, and many of them were hardcore criminals, 11,888 murderers. And I say it all the time, more than 50% of which killed more than one people.We have them in our country. We’ve gotten most of them out. We’re getting the rest of them out very soon. But they want to shut down our power plants. They want to set loose the criminals, turn your children transgender, confiscate your money, and raise up the Palestinian flag right in the middle of your wonderful state. And at the same time, they’re willing to defile our great and very beautiful American flag. We’re not going to let that happen. Roger [Senator Roger Marshall], how would the Palestinian flag play in the middle of your state? Do think it would play well? I don’t think so. Roger will not… By the way, his opponent, I think, would like it. I’ve learned a lot about him. I’ve learned a lot.

. . .

I have the all time in history Christian vote. I have the evangelical vote, the Christian vote.

. . .

Actual communists: "Where is the party in opposition
that has not been decried as communistic by its
opponents in power?" Source.

The Democrats are the party of Abdul Mohammed El-Sayed. He got very upset because I called him Mohammed. I just felt like it. Somebody said, “how did you do that?” I said, “I’m the president. I can call him whatever the hell I want.” And then they sent me his full name. And, actually, his middle name is Mohammed. You can believe it? It’s true. One good thing, if you call somebody from that part of the world Mohammed, you’re about 65% sure to get it right. So if you have any problem with names, just call the guy Mohammed.

. . .

You have Ilhan Omar. How about her? She comes from maybe the worst country in the entire world, Somalia. They have no government. They have no—they have nothing. All they do is shoot each other. And she comes over here and starts quoting I have constitutional rights, the Constitution. This country—and she hates our country. She is so pathetic.

Rashida Tlaib, how about that beauty? Rashida Tlaib, AOC, AOC. I like AOC better. You know she's doing her thing. James—how about who is now losing, by the way. Ken Paxton is winning in Texas. Because people got wise to James Talafreako. You remember Elizabeth Pocahontas Warren. How about her? Remember the—the ad she did with—her husband walked into the house? "Oh, hi." "Hi, darling." It was like she hadn't seen him in about 20 years. "Oh, hi. Would you like a beer?" Do you remember that crazy ad? Was that the worst? How about this low IQ person, Maxine Waters, low IQ? Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, they're all bad. How would you like to have them representing all of the fraudsters, thieves and thugs driving around in luxury cars? You go up to Minnesota, number one place in the entire country for the sale of Mercedes Benz. Think of it. And Somalians are buying. They come here with low IQs and no money and they get rich.

. . .

So Roger’s opponent [Adam Hamilton]… I did a lot of work on this because, again, I was the number one vote getter whether you call… Whether you say Christianity, whether you say evangelical… I have them all. Whether you say Catholic. How about Catholic? But the number one, by far, was… I don’t believe there was anybody even in second place. There was nothing left. But… So I understand what I’m saying.

Adam Hamilton used to say bad things about me, really radical left things. I mean, he would talk… I said, “this guy’s a radical left lunatic.” And… But he would say bad things about me. And all I did is fight to get rid of the Johnson amendment, to do all of the things I’ve done, so many different things. But he’d… I’d see him. I didn’t know. I never thought he’d be running for office. But I used to hear about this lunatic up here. I said, “what the hell is he doing in Kansas?” But he'd say bad crap about me. And I don’t like people that do that, but he’s a radical left phony who’s pretending to be a moderate because he does not have the courage to tell Kansas the truth about his belief and really who he is.

Hamilton opposed my travel ban to keep terrorists and extremists out of our country, and he was vicious about it. What kind of a president would want to keep killers, thugs, lunatics, but he didn’t say that out of our country. He supports flooding Kansas with unvetted refugees who go around killing people literally for no reason. And they come in. He says it’s okay for people to come in from the most dangerous places on earth they can pour into Kansas. Adam Hamilton used church dollars to fund anti religious transgender activities. I mean… And so he used a lot of church money to fund all of this transgender crap that you’re reading about, who openly mocks Jesus, and he openly mocks Jesus. He promotes a document listing 125 different genders.

Adam Hamilton stated that he believes America is systemically racist. He said that white people must repent. Repent all of you white people. [Laughter] Terrible, terrible—terrible, terrible white people. But for being white, they want you… He wants you to repent because you’re born white and that Kansans should also repent for eating beef because you’re causing global warming. No, but—but think of that. He wants the cattle gone not for—for some reason, because he says they create—you—you know what that means by global warming, right? You know what they're talking about? Next will be human—next will be human beings. When's he going to get into the human being stuff?

. . .

Canada’s been ripping us off for so many years. People got used to it. I didn’t get used to it. We got it under control. No. They’re all leaving O Canada. What do we need their cars for? We… He said, “we’re going to…” Only in Kansas can you get away with it. No. But I do like their national anthem. And I promised them if they become a fifty first state, which is actually what they should do. I said, “I will let you keep ice hockey, and I will let you keep your "O Canada" national anthem.” I like it. So they can have it as a state anthem. No. We’re only kidding. We’re having a good time, but they have been screwing us, really, and they don’t… They’re not doing it anymore. They say, “let’s make a deal. How about a deal?”

See, the thing is they do 95% of their business with us. We do very little with them, and we lose 90 billion a year. I would say that’s a little too much for the privilege of having people live through very cold weather. They do live through cold. Did you ever see the line they drew? They drew years ago. They drew just a line. Some guy with a ruler. Dead straight lines. Not pretty at all. Just a drape. They said, “let those people have that cold air. It’s too cold.” Well, they shouldn’t have done that, but I understand. But Canada’s… They have really… I don’t think… Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t think they have a choice if you want another chance. But we’re not going to lose $90 billion to carry another country. Just like we’re not going to lose a $150 billion with Mexico. And Mexico and Us are very close to a great deal, which will get that number way down, maybe down to… What do you think, Roger, if I told you maybe down to zero? Because we’re losing a lot of money with these. We’re carrying all these countries, and I don’t want to carry these countries. That includes Europe, by the way. Lots of places in Europe. No. We got it. We got it under control, everybody. I love doing this crap. I love it.

. . .

But the Trump dividend, which is the 5,000, just to show you how it does work, it’s approximately $1 trillion. But we have a record setting $22.2 trillion that’s being invested in the United States right now in just fifteen months. So it’s not really… Because we have growth the likes of which no country has ever seen before. That’s what I meant by the pundit. “Do you know what’s happening?” There’s never been growth like this ever.

So the only caveat on the $5,000 is that the Trump dividend, you must spend the money in the United States of America. Okay? We don’t want you saying to your husband, Jim… Oh, because you each get a check, by the way. You don’t want… We don’t want you saying to Jim, “Jim, let’s go to China and spend time on. Let’s go to Japan. Let’s go to South Korea. Let’s go to some beautiful place like France. Let’s go to France. We can join the revolution, Jim, and then come home to sanity.” We don’t want to go to France. I would think that France’s recreation climate is not too good right now. No. But I don’t want you to go to France. I don’t want you to go to The United Kingdom. You got to spend the money in the United States of America. That’s alright.

. . .

So the choice in this election is very simple. You can vote for the radical left Democrat communists to loot your wealth, raise your taxes by $5 trillion, annihilate your borders, decimate Kansas farms, mutilate your children, and give 25 million illegal aliens amnesty to vote. That’s why they let them in. They want to have them vote. Cheating is not good enough. They cheat like hell, but that’s not good enough. They want to destroy our country. Or you can defeat the Democrat communist and vote for more money in your pockets, bigger paychecks for your families, lower taxes, less crime, a booming Kansas economy, and no amnesty for illegal aliens. No amnesty. No amnesty.

I thought about including his fascinating description of his cognitive tests, but thought better of it. You're welcome.

Don't accept this as normal!

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Helen Cox Richardson on Trump and Putin, Ramaswami vs Acton, "fear porn," and other pre-election notes.

Richard Beck has been posting an interesting series on Substack, "Transplant Shock and Spiritual Formation in Protestant Spaces." Here's part seven, "Grace Is Not Opposed to Effort."

This is why Dallas Willard had to say, over and over again, that grace is not opposed to effort. It is, rather, opposed to earning. Willard’s line has become one of the most quoted sentences in evangelical spiritual formation precisely because of what I’m calling transplant shock. Within a synergistic context, Willard’s clarification is unnecessary. Of course, effort and grace are not competitors. Prior to the Protestant Reformation no one imagined that fasting or contemplation would threaten grace.

Mike Farley on "transfigured awareness" and "The Lamb who was slain."

Mimi Marstaller on "extended worship" at Portland (Maine) Friends, and the hospitable example of Jean Zaru.

Finally, back to election season USA. Kristin Du Mez on what history tells us about contested elections. And from the Public Religion Research Institute: Political implications from their 2026 American Values Survey.

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St Olave's Church, Hart Street, London

Katarina Ström at St Olave's Church, October 21

Yesterday I walked over to St Olave's Church to hear Swedish pianist Katarina Ström play a recital program she entitles "An Equal Music," demonstrating how jazz and classical music blend together with no hard boundary.

Her program included Chopin, Ryuitchi Sakamoto short pieces paired with Bach, three Gershwin preludes, Duke Ellington, and Beethoven. She asked us to listen for Bach's and Sakamoto's shared understanding of the silence between notes.

Her related recitals next month: November 10, 1 p.m., at St Stephens Walbrook; November 18, 1 p.m., at St Martins Ludgate.

Here's a sample:

On not being so glib...

Source.  

In an interview with David Axelrod at the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics, U.S. representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez commented on the ways the wealth-dominated system tries to keep her in her place: (This is at about the 1 hr 5 min point.)

...[T]hey assume that my ambition is positional. They assume that my ambition is a title or a seat. And my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country.

Presidents come and go. Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go. But single payer healthcare is forever. A living wage is forever. Workers' rights are forever. Women's rights, all of that.

A finer point to your question is that when you aren't attached, right, when you haven't been fantasizing about being this or that since you were seven years old, it is tremendously liberating. Because I get to wake up every day and say, how am I going to meet the moment? And conditions change radically all the time. So I make my response less to an attachment to some ... title or position and working backwards from there. But I make decisions by waking up in the morning, looking out the window, and observing the conditions of this country. And saying, what move or decision can I make today that's going to get us closer to that future, stronger, faster, and better than yesterday?

We are about two months away from the USA's midterm elections. It's a chance to reverse some of the corruption and cruelty of the MAGA occupation. Times are too urgent to let glib categories shape our evaluation of candidates, but it sometimes seems that's all the media can manage.

So Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and similar candidates are, we're told, too radical for national success. The recent successes of other progressive primary winners reportedly makes the Democratic Party establishment nervous. But none of that gamesmanship interests me. I want someone to vote for who is passionate about justice and sustainability, and who will work for that vision from whatever vantage point they have, not someone who knows how to pander.

Fortunately, "all politics is local," according to the maxim attributed to Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill. Ultimately, everyone running for office must convince their own constituency. Some of those constituencies will be convinced by candidates from the left, others will choose differently. Let those candidates all define themselves by their own words and actions, and their ability to listen to us, not by the categories and conventional wisdom of one or another establishment.

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In an article in The Atlantic, "Why Do Rich Kids Love Socialism?", author Tyler Austin Harper makes his point right up front in his article's subtitle: "Having money isn’t at odds with wanting a fairer economic system." Naturally, such "rich kids" come in for some predictable and tiresome mocking, but there's actually something interesting going on:

In a 1977 essay for the magazine Radical America, Barbara and John Ehrenreich coined a term for America’s growing population of college-educated knowledge workers: the “professional managerial class.” The authors noted that members of the PMC tend to have jobs that create and maintain capitalist culture and its associated values. They have jobs in industries—such as the arts, education, medicine, entertainment, law, advertising, and technology—that could be seen as offering proof of capitalism’s ability to provide Americans with lives that are culturally rich, physically healthy, intellectually stimulating, and filled with technologies that make things easier. (Being a staff writer at The Atlantic is a great example of one such job.)

According to the Ehrenreichs, the 20th-century professional class played a crucial role, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, in maintaining the public’s faith in the economic system. The present growing embrace of leftist politics among the professional class suggests that the PMC is no longer especially enthusiastic about that mission. A CBS News/YouGov poll released this month found that Democrats, who belong to a party dominated by the professional class, were almost twice as likely to view socialism favorably (58 percent) as they were to view capitalism favorably (32 percent). Among college-educated Democrats, support for socialism was 71 percent.

Could there be some deeper reason for this development other than blatant hypocrisy in the pursuit of edgy trendiness? [Links are in the original article.] Harper continues,

A teacher who has to buy his own school supplies, an adjunct professor who works at three universities to make ends meet, a social worker who assists the disadvantaged, a nurse whose hospital was bought by private equity, a federal employee who watches lobbying groups kneecap safety regulations, a data engineer who helps make a product that gives teens suicide advice, a student who takes out burdensome loans to get a degree that is no longer a guaranteed ticket to a middle-class life—what should these people think of capitalism as it currently exists? What do you expect them to think? And why is it considered hypocrisy, rather than a defensible moral position, when some members of the PMC decide that the ugliness they encounter in their workplace, corporate office, and daily life is symptomatic of a system that deserves significant, even systemic, reform?

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Still visiting The Atlantic ... Jonathan Chait considers "The Apocalyptic Style in Woke Thinking: much of the climate movement, particularly its most radical elements, has pivoted to Palestine."

Apparently if we care intensely enough about climate change (he cites the example of Greta Thunberg), we are not supposed to "pivot" to another major concern.

The draining of energy away from issues that once seemed so urgent has been slightly disorienting, even humorous. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently repeated a catchphrase that has circulated on the left, “Woke 1 was crazy,” which simultaneously laughs off the excesses of the social-justice left while implicitly assuming that a Woke 2 is just around the corner. The reality, however, is that Woke 2 is already here, and Gaza is its current preoccupation.

It's very fair to point to the excesses of the "apocalyptic style" in advocacy, whether it's in climate change or the campaign for a truly fair resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's also very important to ask whether the zeal for either cause, or any cause of equal gravity, is driven by powerful ideals or some form of self-gratification. Are you genuinely trying to open the eyes of the greater public, or is your favorite audience already in the activist subculture whose good opinion you crave?

But it is totally unfair to mock genuine idealists when they may suddenly realize that, in the midst of their care for an ecologically sustainable future for our children and grandchildren, they also become aware that Palestinians are being killed by the tens of thousands, and others may become ethnically cleansed from their homes. If you or I become aware of mass human agony today, don't we have the right to switch priorities for a time? We may earn criticism for not having all the facts, or for ineffective advocacy, but good-faith efforts to respond to catastrophe don't deserve the dismissive label of "woke."

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Once again, the socialists are coming!

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Prince Harald playing with the Roosevelts' dog Fala.
Source.

Norway lost its beloved "national grandfather," King Harald V, exactly a week ago.

This YouTube video is a fair introduction to his life and influence.

Among his many personal qualities as a hardworking and devoted servant of his country, King Harald was a living link between the generation that grew up during World War II and our own time. When the Germans invaded Norway in 1940, Prince Harald was just three years old. He and his mother and sisters spent most of the war in the Washington, DC, area, including some time in the White House as guests of the president. At age 8, Harald attended Franklin D. Roosevelt's fourth inauguration, standing just behind the president.

Rest in peace!

Here are some of the arrangements for Harald's funeral in Oslo on this coming Wednesday.

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Two amazing singers! I've cued up a place in the documentary Dolly and Friends: Making a Soundtrack where Dolly Parton gets together with Mavis Staples.

Artemis II

The Artemis II astronauts; their lunar mission began yesterday.
(Left to right: Jeremy Hansen, Canadian Space Agency; NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid Wiseman. Photos: crew: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani; launch: NASA/Michael DeMocker.)

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Did you know that a lunar spaceflight began yesterday, with a crew of four astronauts aboard?

If so, did you care?

I couldn't help caring. As I've written before, space exploration has fascinated me since childhood. But ever since the Apollo project (1961-1972) made lunar spaceflight practically routine, I've been impatient about our next grand goal. After Apollo, low earth orbits just weren't all that impressive. (If the earth's diameter were the height of an average adult male, spaceships in low earth orbit would pass only a couple of inches over his head.) But we've seemingly lacked the ambition and focus to send people beyond those two inches.

It's not that we haven't done some incredible things in space by means of robotic explorers who've already traveled distances that crewed spacecraft aren't likely to reach for perhaps centuries. Some of them, such as the Hubble and JWST projects, have extended our vision into time/space up to just about the theoretical limit of the early universe.

As for money spent on space exploration, our legislators have poured vast amounts into equipment. Since it began in 2011, the Artemis program of heavy-lift rockets and Orion spacecraft has thus far produced two launches, including yesterday's, but it has cost something like US$ 69 billion. The immediate costs associated with yesterday's launch ran to about $4 billion. Despite its bloated costs and gigantic delays, every argument to replace the Artemis launch vehicle with more economical and project-focused alternatives has run up against congressional defenders determined to preserve the associated jobs in their states and districts. These debates have mainly occurred among insiders, because even these astronomical (sorry) costs haven't earned the attention of the ultimate funders—the taxpayers.

(Speaking of human spaceflight expenditures and delays, I won't even mention the problems of the Boeing Starliner.)

The alternatives to those traditional government-owned and -funded programs are the public-private collaborations that produced the SpaceX and Blue Origin spacecraft, among others. But to quote Amy Shira Teitel, "...it's opening the door to an era where NASA could become a contracting agency, funneling its budget to billionaires" instead of providing the leadership and focus of NASA's first decade of human spaceflight and its amazing record of successes in uncrewed exploration.

Again, I share Teitel's concern about the Artemis program in its larger context, if there even is a larger context:

...We have two landing missions or we have four landing missions. Then what? You know, like there's still that big question of what comes after that. And I just feel like we're almost kind of kicking the can down the road a little bit. Like, great, we can have a couple more missions. We can get a bit more science. Um, but then what? We're just delaying having to make a big decision about whether or not to retain this over-budget rocket or try something different or pass it off to commercial partners. It feels like that's an inevitable point that we're going to get to. (From this video.)

Exactly. If we are looking forward to establishing a moon base, as has been proposed, there's not much practical planning evident for how that will happen, given the current maximum of four more Artemis launches (if sticker shock doesn't hit us first!), or even a coherent attempt to persuade us that such a base is a worthwhile project on the way to some specified greater goal. 

And I'm sorry, vague references to China aren't enough. President Kennedy at one point suggested replacing a U.S.-only Apollo project with a collaboration with the USSR and other nations. Is anyone designing a 21st-century version of his vision?

In the meantime, I'm following the Artemis II mission more or less constantly, and hoping very much for its safety and success, but I admit that it's not the same unmixed devotion I had for Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.

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Eric Berger has a somewhat more positive take on Artemis II...but his title points to the lack of public excitement: Why is NASA bothering to go back to the Moon if we’ve already been there? And while you're on the Ars Technica Web site, see Stephen Clark's NASA officials sidestepped questions on Artemis II risks—there’s a reason why.

Nancy Thomas and her "super-salad" moments.

Mike Farley on Sein zum Tode. "Death is an old friend."

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All Saints Cathedral, Nairobi, Kenya. "Jesus, Remember Me...."

Boredom for Dummies (and everyone)—partly a repost

Detail from Japanese Pearl Harbor attack plan. Source.

First, a few words about our latest war.

When I heard the first news bulletins about the 2026 Iran War, I couldn't help thinking about Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, that "dastardly" attack that happened while negotiations between Japan and the USA were still underway. U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull expressed his sense of betrayal very plainly to the Japanese negotiators.

The U.S./Israeli opening attack on Iran also happened during a period of active negotiations, facilitated in good faith by Oman.

I'm sure you have as much access to good analysis and commentary on this war as I do, so today I don't plan to say more here. I'm just aware that there are people alive at this moment, in Iran, Lebanon, Israel, perhaps the Gulf states, and beyond, who will not see tomorrow. May God have mercy on them, and on us.

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Wess Daniels (from Reedwood
Friends Weekly)

Last Sunday afternoon, Reedwood Friends Church here in Portland, Oregon, hosted C. Wess Daniels (biography) for a fascinating afternoon advertised as a session on "The Practice of Silence as Resistance in an Attention Economy."

It turns out that one of the themes that Wess has bravely connected to the topic of silence is boredom.

Boredom.

He's been thinking about how to attract more Guilford students to silence as a topic and as a practice ... and not just the Quaker students. Furthermore, he's certainly not hiding from the topic of boredom. He's not defining "boredom" as a danger for budding practitioners of silence, but boredom as a part of something good! Boredom as a superpower! 

Maybe it's best if I let  Wess explain it himself. Here are two of his blog posts that contain some savory hints of the content he shared so engagingly with us last Sunday:

Let’s Get Bored Together: The Practice of Silence and Resisting the Attention Economy. (February 26, 2023)

A Shot of Light - Getting My Head Above Water. (September 5, 2025)

By the time we met on Sunday, Wess had some other interesting stories to tell from his experiences with students—for example, when he asked them to interview trees.

All of this reminded me that I wrote about "boredom for dummies" back in October 2017, just after our final trip to the USA from Russia. Here it is:

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The Amtrak Empire Builder.

... I don't have time for those who don't know what time is.

These words from Boris Pasternak came back to me during the long, slow hours we spent on Amtrak's trains from New York City to Chicago, and then from Chicago to Portland, Oregon.

To tell you the truth, I really needed those long, slow hours of sitting by the train window and letting time carry me into my future. In my last weeks and days in Elektrostal, time went by with dizzying speed, and my mind struggled to keep up, storing up impressions and sensations against the uncertainties of that future. It's likely that we'll never live in Russia again. (Yes, we hope to visit, but even that is uncertain. In any case, I don't think we'll ever again be residents.)

We are learning about gravitational waves rippling through space and time, thanks to Albert Einstein and the recent LIGO observations. For most of us, it's not news that time also seems to be experienced in waves, now compressed and now just dragging along. I love living in the moment, but slow moments, and stretched-out periods where time nearly seems to stop, are equally precious to me.

In a moment of unguarded boastfulness, I once said that I was never bored. That claim didn't stop me from preparing for the transatlantic flight and the train trip by loading my Amazon Fire with episodes of Doctor Who and the Vietnam War series, along with two novels, two books of theology, a history of Protestant missions, and two autobiographies—by Norwegian politician Gro Harlem Brundtland and American astronaut Scott Kelly. But much of the time, day and night, I just watched the country scroll past the window. I felt no pressure to savor or memorize or store up—I just let the planet be the planet and me be me.

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Boredom is not a problem to be solved. It is the last privilege of a free mind.

These words open Gayatri Devi's essay on boredom, published on the Guardian Web site about two years ago. Her essay seems to assume a definition of boredom as a state of discontent resulting from lack of external stimulation. (Dictionaries, on the other hand, often seem to focus on boredom as a state resulting from the wrong kind of stimulation—tedious, repetitive, uninteresting.) She rightly recommends not curing boredom by reaching for new sources of stimulus, such as the ever-handy smartphone. Instead, she recommends "metathinking"—in a sense, observing yourself as you slide into boredom, considering what makes you bored, "how your mind responds to boredom, what you feel and think when you get bored."

I would just add a couple of things that are, maybe, already implied in Gayatri Devi's advice:

• Learn to enjoy your own company. This doesn't mean to give yourself a free pass on everything that might appear on a Fourth Step AA inventory -- but look beyond your imperfections to the whole of yourself, the person whose God-given mind is capable of thought, reflection, observation, intention, reconciliation, synthesis of old and new ideas, and so much more. That apparently empty period of time, whether it's at on a slow train or in line at a bank, is just a golden opportunity to get to spend some time with your complicated self. (Learning to enjoy your own company is a good step toward confronting temptation and addiction. God loved you into being, as Anthony Bloom said, so it's time to look at yourself with God's loving intention in mind.)
• Reframe slow time as prayer time. You can ask God or your own memory banks for prayer concerns that you may have forgotten or just heard about or that simply beg for your attention. Devi mentions Wordsworth's daffodils; you might instead choose or form a short prayer along the lines of the prayers I mention here....

Make me an instrument of your peace.

Yes.

Lord Jesus, have mercy.

I want to dwell in you.

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Back in 2011, I wrote about reading Pasternak's words about time as I sat waiting my turn at the bank branch in Elektrostal.

(End of repost. Original is here.)

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John Kinney speaks to Spokane Friends on abundance and scarcity.

Elizabeth Glass Turner calmly considers American evangelicals and the Epstein files.

Luis Parrales: The raw experience of love restored writer Christopher Beha's faith, or at least the possibility of faith. "Beha’s response is to describe himself as 'a skeptical believer'; for him, moments of certainty commingle with moments of doubt." Such restorations have happened to other writers, too.

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Also at Reedwood Friends Church: Last Wednesday we welcomed musician Dann Pell and his resonator guitars for a wonderful evening of music.

Some of his songs reminded me of the bard tradition in Russia, though in Dann Pell's case, there is an amazing balance between the poetry and spirituality of the lyrics and his intense and often intricate fingering.

Dann is from Exeter Friends Meeting of Caln Quarter in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. He's originally from Chester County, which, a lifetime ago, I knew well....

Don't miss a chance to hear him yourself, or invite him to your meeting or church. Here's a video that gives you a better sense than my words could.

Digesting 2025

Sergey Kadyrov's audiovisual Christmas card from Elektrostal, Russia. Link to video.

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Methodists organize Christmas Eve vigil at ICE facility,
Portland, Oregon. Source.

For me, the constant theme for this year has been faithfulness to Christian discipleship in a country under occupation.

Enough of these posts over the past year have been on this theme, so it's not necessary for me to belabor it here. I'm just grateful to be part of a faith community that has not surrendered to the intolerable.

Two of this year's high points for me involved my relationship with the land where I was born. In July I was present for the departure of the sloop-replica Restauration, sailing from Stavanger to New York City on the 200th anniversary of the original departure of the first organized emigration of Norwegians to the USA. And in November I received word that my application to regain my Norwegian citizenship had been approved. (It had been lost when I became a U.S. citizen at a time when Norway didn't allow dual citizenship, which it now does.)

By long practice, my last post for 2025 is a selection of the year's posts, one per month....

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JANUARY: 1975: From Mississippi to Moscow.

My 1975 visit to Russia began even before I left London. Shortly after I boarded Aeroflot's IL-62 to Moscow, before I had taken my seat, the airplane began taxiing. The two seats next to mine were occupied by two delightful middle-aged women who had boarded in San Francisco and who now helped wedge me into my seat. Almost all the floor space was taken up by their numerous bottles and packages of goodies (apparently no need to secure carry-on items!), but after a bit of rearranging, I was fine. Soon they were offering me all kinds of yummy pastries, and insisted on adding cognac to my coffee.

Full post.

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FEBRUARY: Enthusiasm and politics.

It is no surprise that many Americans have not heard of the "network of networks" that compose Independent Charismatics, particularly those centered on Peter Wagner's New Apostolic Reformation. (See this post, Are we agents of Lucifer?, for a brief introduction.) Those of us who just catch occasional glimpses of Pentecostal and charismatic subcultures may find them either absurd or disturbing, especially if we rely on video clips of "preachers gone wild" and the like. We are therefore likely to underestimate the appeal and reach of those subcultures.

Full post.

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MARCH: The tax covenant.

Ideally, by paying taxes, we citizens are simply upholding a covenant we have with each other. We have made promises to each other—"to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" (preamble to the U.S. Constitution), setting up a government for these purposes and assigning that government, through our legislature, the practical tasks needed to fulfill those promises. We know that these tasks cost money, so our legislators make a list of those costs and institute sources of revenue, including taxes. That's the covenant: to decide on the tasks needed for the "general Welfare," from which we all benefit, directly or indirectly, and to pay our fair share for those tasks

Too bad it doesn't end there!

Full post.

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APRIL: Malice in Wonderland, part two.

Looking back at the first principles I proposed back in November, are they adequate for this era of flagrant and gleeful cruelty? I still feel strongly about not dividing our country into pro- and anti-Trump populations, and resisting the degradation of civil discourse. What other disciplines and practices should we consider? For myself, I'm constantly drawn back to Jesus, who was himself mocked and whipped before being crucified. What can we say to those who proclaim faith in Jesus even as they mock and whip others and look to their MAGA audiences for approval? The case for actual evangelism seems more urgent than ever.

Full post.

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MAY: Patriotism revisited.

Of course the USA is not the only country in the world whose citizens, or at least some of them, believe they live in "the greatest land of all." And, they might even be able to explain why they believe this. In the case of the USA, my idealistic preferred explanation to justify claims of the USA's greatness is John Gunther's famous line that the USA is "a country deliberately founded on a good idea"—an idea whose most succinct expression might be the first three words of the U.S. Constitution: "We the people...."

As an aspiration it is powerful, and it's part of our notorious American exceptionalism, but in these fractious times, are "we" still "we"? And as for "the people," is our government still, in Abraham Lincoln's words, "of the people, by the people, for the people"?

One thing seems clear to me about American patriotism. If it becomes detached from that "good idea," then it degrades into cultish compulsory slogans, chiefly useful for attacking one's political enemies.

Full post.

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JUNE: Belonging to Friends.

As I got more and more acquainted with Quaker ways, I learned that the process of realizing that one "belonged" had various names, especially "convincement" and "conversion." In my own life, conversion came first, earlier that same year, when my reading of the Sermon the Mount, Matthew's version, led me to trust Jesus. I concluded for myself that conversion was a matter of opening my eyes and heart to an inward light that could illuminate a path through life. Becoming convinced, on the other hand, meant that, at least in my specific case, the companionship of Quakers provided the best, most direct guides along that path.

All this was no random accident, I realized. My family's chaos (combined, ironically, with its cult of obedience) and the public agonies of the Viet Nam War era, had already led me to nonviolence and a rejection of authoritarianism. I couldn't say where worldly contingencies and the Holy Spirit's guidance merged in my case. But once I realized that I didn't want to practice my newfound faith all alone, a peace church with almost zero hierarchy was bound to appeal. I wanted to go public. I wanted to belong officially!—whatever that meant.

Full post.

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JULY: The whole Jericho Road.

"... We all hold critical roles...." [Libby Willcomm, on working to rescue now vs working for systemic change.] Exactly. And here's what I would love to see: that "mutuality" would also become mutual accountability and mutual trust. The next time the question of how to prioritize our resources comes up, I hope I'll remember (or better yet, someone else will remember!) to invite us to go around the group and ask how we arrive at our priorities, and how we make our contributions accordingly.

Maybe you have ways I've never heard of, to address the systemic causes or the most effective methods of direct relief. Unless we talk, I might never know. Even if I don't sign on to your priority, I can pray for you, and support you in the direction you've chosen, knowing that our whole community will then be more effective in keeping God's promises ... rather than one-upping each other on which of us have chosen the better path. I think it's also good to let each other know how we arrive at the amounts or forms of giving that we choose.

Full post.

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AUGUST: Fiercely inspirational.

[Lamorna] Ash makes me think about what a conversation between Francis Spufford and Flannery O'Connor might be like. Her survey of Christianity in the UK ranges from rigidity with a happy salesface, to bass-driven ecstasy, to personal histories of toxic power games, to encounters with mysticism ancient and modern, to utter serenity, and everything in between. Her 60 interviewees have variously been converted, disillusioned, reconverted, with all levels of investment in making—or not making—their personal experiences and confessions congruent with the institution they're in at the moment. She candidly reports how this research and writing project is affecting her own life, even as she awaits a diagnosis on her mother's symptoms that suggest dementia may be coming.

She is not simply reporting on what Christianity looks like to some of her Generation Z contemporaries. She's also wrestling with Christianity's own primitive and sometimes compelling strangeness, and its multifaceted persistence. She thinks about the difference between the Nicene theologians wrestling so deeply with the nature of Christ, and those Christian thinkers of our own era who can't get beyond sex.

Full post.

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SEPTEMBER: First principles 3.0?

[An "EXCELLENT post" from "your favorite blogger."]

Two days ago, I had a chance to hear Howard Macy read his draft chapter on "Blessing Enemies" from his forthcoming book with the working title Living to Bless. This chapter of his book is based on Matthew 5:43-48, but not only: Howard traces the "love your enemies" theme throughout the Hebrew and Christian Bible.

Howard's full chapter is a compelling lesson in why and how we bless our enemies, while not denying the dangers they may pose. Here's the challenge for me: its teachings can be applied to our fractured world this very day, if we're willing. 

Full post.

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OCTOBER: "The cult of personality and its consequences."

Yesterday morning on our public radio station I heard Meghna Chakrabarti open her On Point program with these words:

It would later be called the Secret Speech, but on February 25th, 1956, a cold morning in Moscow, no one knew what to expect. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stood before the 20th Congress of the Communist Party and did the unthinkable.

For a few wild moments, before she went on to explain her reasons for referring to this speech, my memories flashed back five decades to my student years at the Institute for Soviet and East European Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. In those years, I studied Russian language and literature, Russian history, and the politics of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. The "secret speech" was a landmark event in Soviet history, and I remember being fascinated by the speech itself and the varied commentaries on Khrushchev's motives, what he should have said, what he should not have said, and the uneven progress of the destalinization efforts that followed.

Full post.

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NOVEMBER: Could we end up on the same page?

We Quakers haven't exactly gone through a civil war, but we have had a number of severe divisions, as a result of which (as Kevin [Camp]pointed out) we're often appealing to the same history and the same Quaker language and drawing very different conclusions. Kevin's post urges us not to let divisions demoralize us, and I agree.

In two periods of my service with international Friends organizations—ten years with Friends World Committee for Consultation and seven with Friends United Meeting—I visited hundreds of Friends communities, and I found among them many Friends who, with varying degrees of stubbornness, would fit Kevin's descriptions of people as different as chalk and cheese according to their preferred interpretations of core Quakerism. But over all those years, I caught glimpses of progress as well. Maybe we won't be reading from the exact same page anytime soon, but there are many Friends who are at least looking at each other's favorite pages....

Full post.

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DECEMBER: Continuing the work.

There's a Russian phrase, both precise and vague at the same time, that translates to English as "in times like these...."

In times like these, we write about Friends' service in Russia with love and enthusiasm tempered with discretion. We don't give names of people and partner organizations. We do emphasize our nonviolent and truthful principles, just as we "harmless and innocent people of God" did in earlier turbulent times—the years of our movement's origin.

As a former member of the board of Friends House Moscow, I appreciated receiving this report on the meeting held this autumn in southern France. I'm grateful for the permission to use it here, with one or two edits. Links were added by me.

[The report follows. See the full post.]

Full post.

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Video: On his radio and streaming-video show Full Contact, the acid-tongued Vladimir Solovyov says the mission of Russia is to save humanity on a civilizational level, countering the evil West. Along the way, he makes a point about Donald Trump and Greenland: If the USA deems the annexation of Greenland is necessary for our security, why shouldn't Russia carve itself a piece of land from its neighbors for the sake of Russian security?

On violence and the Bible: John Kinney at Spokane Friends Church. From earlier, here's an interesting exchange among Anabaptists: Why Conrad Kanagy is not a red-letter Christian, and Spencer Bradford on why "Is God violent?" isn't the right question.

Nancy Thomas on the biblical House of Bread.

Are you like this author and me? We just don't use the telephone anymore the way we did not so long ago....

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A Christmas rerun. One of the comments on this video of a contemporary Norwegian Christmas song: "When I hear this song, it's Christmas... Thank you for that, Oslo Gospel Choir."

Continuing the work

Maison Quaker à Congénies / The Quaker Centre in Congénies, France. Source.

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There's a Russian phrase, both precise and vague at the same time, that translates to English as "in times like these...."

In times like these, we write about Friends' service in Russia with love and enthusiasm tempered with discretion. We don't give names of people and partner organizations. We do emphasize our nonviolent and truthful principles, just as we "harmless and innocent people of God" did in earlier turbulent times—the years of our movement's origin.

As a former member of the board of Friends House Moscow, I appreciated receiving this report on the meeting held this autumn in southern France. I'm grateful for the permission to use it here, with one or two edits. Links were added by me.

— Johan

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Maison Quaker Congénies warm embrace of FHM

Seventeen Friends travelled from far and wide to be in Congénies in Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France during the weekend of the 24­-27th October, 2025, coming from as far away as Berlin, California and Moscow. For some, the journey took several days to complete, which made it all the more gratifying when we were offered a warm welcome on arrival at Maison Quaker by the resident staff, Eli and Miranda. Their generous hospitality extended over the entire weekend.

Asked about the massive amount of work the FHM meeting entailed for them, both Miranda and Eli responded in the same manner: “It is lovely to see Maison Quaker so full. It is rare to have such a large group of Friends present all at one time. This makes it really special for us.”

Even the weather seemed to make an extra effort, sharing the last warmth of summer, while much of the rest of France suffered downpours in the wake of Storm Benjamin. In the beauty of Congénies, war felt a very long way away. Heavily laden persimmon trees in the garden sagged under the weight of their late-summer abundance; butterflies, including two-tailed pashas and fritillaries, flitted among the flowering bushes; the balmy nights were punctuated by the hooting of tawny owls. Congénies was a fine place to be: a place of quiet and peace, ideal for discernment of difficult and pressing questions.

The task of the board was to discern the future strategy of Friends House Moscow. This was no easy challenge. Given that the war in Ukraine shows no signs of ending any day soon—astonishingly, there has already been nearly four years of fighting, rather than the three or four days many commentators had predicted—nothing about the work of FHM can be taken for granted. The board thus needed to answer tough questions. Should we continue the work? And if we should, how do we do so practically, given all the challenges it now faces?

Our deliberations started with a look back in time through the lens of Sergei Nikitin’s history of Quaker relief in early twentieth century Russia, noting that there has been constant Quaker interaction with Russia for more than a century. We then examined how our personal motivations for this work live into the Quaker Testimonies of Peace, Simplicity, Integrity and Equality, before pivoting to look at the current political environment in Russia. We considered how these changes have affected the relationships of Friends to Friends House Moscow, asking whether or not there was continuing support from local and yearly meetings in Europe and the U.S. We agreed that there is still support.

Tight finances mean that FHM cannot do all it would like to, nor meet all the needs of those approaching it for help. Three days of discernment led us to the conclusion that we should continue to support the refugee centre, bolster our publishing work, and maintain our support for the language club.

Three priorities

The refugee centre continues to help the socialisation and education of children whose families have come to Russia in search of a better life and greater security. We have been supporting the Centre since the mid-1990s. The refugees and other migrants come from a wide variety of countries. Once in Russia, they face many challenges, and often need to keep a very low profile, which makes the centre so critical for them.

Richard Foster's
Celebration of Discipline.
Source. Online version.

Our publishing efforts remain central. We have published 22 titles in Moscow, following translation into Russian. “Best sellers” include Plague, Pestilence and Famine by Muriel Payne, The Fruits of Solitude by William Penn, and Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster.

We will continue to support the language club. Over the past year we have conducted hundreds of language lessons for students who wish to develop confidence is speaking in public in another language. We view it as a sign of hope that students wish to continue learning another language and that cultural contact with other European countries has not stopped completely.

The way opens

By the time Friends gathered for meeting for worship on Sunday, which included members of the local meeting, board of Friends House Moscow had already spent two days in contemplation and debate, chewing over the difficult issues facing the organisation. There was still a further day to go, but by the time of meeting for worship, we were feeling positive about the future of FHM.

Around thirty, including partners and Friends from Congénies local meeting, shared lunch on Sunday. Like every meal in Maison Quaker, it was graced by excellent food. Each day’s breakfast were notable for being laden with pastries and croissants from the local boulangerie, L’ Amandine, which also supplied the cake for Sunday evening when we celebrated Pat’s birthday. Lunch and dinner were prepared by a local cook, so no one went hungry!

The final day was something of a threshing meeting, as we needed to match our finances to our priorities. Sterling efforts by those of us who understand spreadsheets and IT gave us all a clear understanding that, whichever way up we looked at things, they did not square—there simply was not enough money in the pot to do all we wished FHM to do. We the leading to continue the work, we concluded the three days by committing ourselves both to the budget and to urgent need to raise additional support.

Perhaps the most important support that Friends House needs is the energy and vision of people who may have never heard of this program, and might not speak Russian, but who recognize the need for Friends House and its potential for healing, reconciliation, and encouragement in times like these. If you have follow-up questions or ideas, write to me, and if I don't know the answer, I'll find someone who does. Also see the related link below.

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In The Friend: some context for the board meeting described above.

Two appreciations of filmmakers Rob and Michele Reiner: Andrew Pulver. Kristin Du Mez.

Homeland Security (USA) is proposing to require certain tourists coming to the USA to make available their social network posts for the last five years and all e-mail addresses, personal and business, over the last ten years. Here's the form to read the details and make your comments. In the list of "newly proposed changes" to the data required from travelers, see especially (3) "Mandatory Social Media"; and (4) "High Value Data Elements," requiring data from family members as well as travelers themselves. Deadline for comments: February 8.

Mattea Kramer (TomDispatch) on antisemitism and freedom of speech.

Bradley Bell (Upstream Collective) on racial reconciliation in cross-cultural ministry.

The promise of Genesis 3–4 is that despite our best intentions we will inevitably cause ruptures (such as on my second to last day on the field when in a wave of cultural exhaustion I exploded on my closest friends because they asked for money). The aim of cross-cultural service is not solely to avoid such things, though it’s worth our best effort. It is to be sent as ambassadors of the entire Ephesians 2 gospel, true ministers of reconciliation who abide the often mortifying work of repair—the costly reweaving of trust.

Cherice Bock was co-editor for a special issue of Quaker Studies. (That page has links to the individual articles, including Cherice's on “Quakers and Ecospirituality: Spiritual Grounding for Climate Action.”)

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Sergey Kadyrov's music, and his scenes and holiday decorations from the cities of Noginsk and Elektrostal. Instant nostalgia, of course. Thank you, Sergey! (The cafe at our former workplace, the New Humanities Institute, appears briefly starting at 1:12; three views altogether.)

Traveling shorts

A couple of weeks ago I sketched our travels from London, England, to Hampstead, New Hampshire, via Barcelona. As I prepared to publish that post, we were hearing reports of winter conditions predicted for the path of our upcoming train trip home via Boston and Chicago.

As it turned out, we traveled in great comfort (despite being in coach seats the whole three days), but winter weather did cause several delays, particularly west of Chicago. By Malta, Montana, outside temperatures were down to -6 F.

At one time, technical problems and "congestion" got us five hours behind schedule, but we pulled into Portland, Oregon, only four hours late.

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I brought an 800-page book with me, and nearly finished it on the train. It was Anne Rivers Siddons's Peachtree Road, a fictionalized social history of 20th-century Atlanta, Georgia, mostly from the point of view of its midcentury elite families. It's a sweeping cultural epic combined with close-up accounts of family dysfunctions and episodes of social failure worthy of Tolstoy. In any case,the book had plenty to keep me occupied.

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One moment in Peachtree Road was particularly poignant for me. The author described the impact of President Kennedy's assassination on the idealists in Atlanta's emerging leadership of the early 1960's. I remember the assassination vividly, but at age ten, I had not had any sense of the "Camelot" aura around the Kennedys' White House. 

Now, reading the novel, I remembered an incident in my Russian history class at Carleton University. The professor was Carter Elwood, a central figure in Slavic studies in Canada and the world, and an inspiring instructor in the classroom. (And Carleton had no lack of inspiring instructors in Soviet studies—Vladimir Grebenshchikov, Paul Varnai, Halina Stepanovna van de Lagemaat—see last item here, Edward Lee, and others.)

On November 22, 1973, the tenth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, Elwood set aside his normal themes. He talked to us about that brief period of new ideals, energy, and elegance, that Kennedy's presidency seemed to bring, and that were ended so cruelly by Oswald's bullets. With tears in his eyes, he contrasted the Kennedys' Camelot with the state of affairs in 1973, Nixon having just gone on television the previous week to tell us he was not a crook.

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We have made this particular three-day railroad trip several times before, but it's not the longest train trip we've taken. That happened in 2011, when we spent four days on the train from Moscow, Russia, to Sukhbaatar, Mongolia. Some pictures from that trip are here, and I described the book I read on that trip, Crazy for God, in the following week's post.

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One final note on travel. This year I marked the fiftieth anniversaries of two trips that helped shape my life. The first one was to Mississippi, and the second, to Moscow and Leningrad. More on those trips at From Mississippi to Moscow.

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The Friends Incubator for Public Ministry presents an online conversation with Windy Cooler and historian Tom Hamm on bold Quaker ministers. It's this Saturday at 11 a.m. Pacific time. Register through the link on this page.

Two Washington Post items on religion in the USA: "A hidden trend" (new fascination with faith among young people); and Senator Warnock's warning to all of us,  particularly Democrats, of the cost of ignoring faith. (Video of Warnock's presentation is available here.)

Is there a moment of truth coming for the USA's NASA and its moon-landing project? Ars Technica's Eric Berger describes a recent congressional hearing in which one credible scientist made his doubts very clear.

Tricia Gates Brown on "the hidden burden of chronic shame."

I cannot, cannot press "publish" on this post without noting the vulgar inhumanity of Trump on Somalia and Somalis. It is a festering scandal that such a man occupies the White House. Words fail me, so I'll link to The Guardian's Moira Donegan.

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In keeping with the travel theme, I'm closing this week's post with a classical pianist from London, Nataly Ganina. She began her musical education at age 5 in Riga, Latvia. We first heard her at a lunchtime concert at St. Olave's Hart Street, London, three years ago, and then again at the same place last month. I couldn't find a video clip from that location, but here she is at Holy Trinity South Woodford last October, playing one of my favorite impromptus from Schubert, as she did again a couple of weeks later at St. Olave.

(I've selected the segment that starts with Schubert's fourth impromptu from Op. 90, but if you have the time, listen to the whole concert.)