Home Again

We are back from South America; back from Chile Days; and home to our own showers, our own beds, Coffee Mornings, and our own country. There is pleasure and nourishment in all these things. We are home, but we are not unchanged.

The best part of travel, for me, is the people I meet, and the way that seeing the world and meeting these people changes my perspective. 

Access to travel and technology truly make the world seem smaller and smaller. I feel more and more that divisions are artificial, and we all live in the same world together. As small as it gets, however, it is so much larger than my own life, my views, my needs. That is what happens when I travel. I grow smaller, but larger in understanding and compassion (at least I hope so). 

A small example is the two women from Moscow we met at a hostel in Pucon, Chile. We chatted for several days, and I discovered that almost none of my assumptions about their lives were accurate. I hope they felt the same. I like to think, that at least in the virtual world, I now have two friends in Moscow.

I have challenged myself, yet again, not to travel boldly in the world to confirm my suspicions, but to muster enough courage to go and discover all the ways in which I am probably wrong. I hope that I do return with greater understanding and compassion.

I am also returning to my country, whose fate concerns me greatly right now. I am working to apply my compassion to these concerns, rather than my alarm and anger. Compassion is always the correct response, even if I have to dig hard to unearth it from beneath my fears, and believe me, right now I am digging.

I have many things that I want to say about current affairs, and I work things out by talking. I can't not talk about things of interest and concern. While in Chile for three months, I was addicted to Facebook, both because I was lonely and estranged and longed for contact, and because the news today is like the proverbial train wreck. I could not stop looking.

I have said many things on Facebook, the reasons are stated above. I will continue to have many things to say and hope to discuss with others, but I am going to cut way back on my Facebook use and attention.

First, the daily shouting of the "ain't it awfuls" gives me indigestion, literally, and provokes a tendency toward knee-jerk reactions. I have tried to curb them, but it is just so much easier to "like" and put up "hit-and-run" comments than it is to soberly investigate the news and take time to think and assimilate. I need to move myself closer to sober investigation and critical thinking. As I have said on FB, the news is shocking and dismaying enough in reality; I don't need the hyper-spin and fake news. I fear that our reality is now too closely pinned to sound bites and outrageous statements that we have failed to seek to confirm. Please don't tell me that it is impossible to find out the truth: it just takes more work and more sources.

What I hope to do now, is use this blog to help me think through what I have read and heard and try to make sense of the information I have gained. I will share it. If anyone wants to read it, fine, but it primarily serves as a way for me to put on the breaks a bit and work through the horrors.

I won't say that I will never visit FB again. I want to hear about friends and family. I just have to cut back. I will share this blog, but having to take time to go to my blog and read it cuts down on the "in your face" aspect of what I have to say.

I will be talking about Donald Trump. I believe to my core that his election is a threat to our nation and an affront to everything that I believe in my faith, my morals, and my ethics. Writing about it is one of the legitimate efforts that I can make to resist him and the way that he is pledging to lead our country. I strongly feel that it is my moral and patriotic duty to resist him and his henchmen in every legal way that I can. I do not yet know all the directions this might take, but I do know that I have to speak out when I see and hear wrongdoing and the wrongful manipulation of facts.

I no longer feel that FB is the best venue for expressing my thoughts on this. I do think that it will be a way for me to link up with anyone who wants to read what I have to say. 

So, we are back. The work of being a good citizen begins. A president, who I feel is mentally and morally unfit, is coming to power this week. This is not yet a totalitarian government, and those of us who oppose him, can and will use our freedom of speech and freedom of choice, to work  to limit that power and toward replacing him as soon as possible. I have said to friends, in a previous e-mail, that I pray that our system of government and our constitution will stand, and that we will work through this time of trouble together, even if not always in agreement.

I will say again, I have a greater sense of how small I am, but we live in a country whose greatness resides in the belief that all people and all opinions matter. They have worth, and they need to be heard.