I am writing this morning from my grandson’s bedroom in Thousand Oaks, CA. It’s 4:00 in the morning, but whaddaya gonna do? It’s not like I can remember the last time I actually slept all the way through the night!
Yesterday, I woke up at 3:00 ayem to get a 6:00 ayem ride to the airport for an 8:00 ayem flight to Burbank, only to be informed that – due to mechanical error – that flight was canceled, and that I was gonna be rerouted up to Seattle at 10:30 for a 2:00 flight to Burbank that would get me in at 4:00. But then even more technical difficulties delayed the Seattle flight as well, so that I didn’t wind up in Burbank till 5:30 in the evening.
Was I thrilled about this? Well, not entirely. I had some really fun things I had hoped to do, some really fun people I’d hoped to see. None of which got to happen.
On the other hand, there was a wonderful old gent (I’m guessing in his 70s, which makes him just a hair older than me) who was playing the shit out of a lovely piano right next to the stand where I got my breakfast chili (which, incidentally, was delicious). I watched his hands as he played, for about an hour, studying the grace and flow of his movements. It’s something I aspire to, and he had it in spades, so fluid it seemed effortless, though I know how many years of self-training went into it. (Like me, he couldn’t read a note of music. All by ear. I just loved him for that.)
And in a weird piece of synchronicity, the second song that he played was a song that I’d been waking up and hearing in my head all week. “The Windmills of Your Mind”, from The Thomas Crown Affair, circa 1968, written by the actor/songwriter Noel Harrison. The fact that I’d been hearing it, and now he was playing it, told me that I was in the right place at the right time. And that everything was fine.
Cuz, I mean, would I have preferred to be on a plane with mechanical issues that they hadn’t found? That’s how you wind up dying on a fucking airplane. So rather than complain about how they messed up my lunch in Burbank, I was just happy to be alive at the Portland Airport, listening to luscious music, then talking with the lovely gentleman performing it, on a beautiful, beautiful morning.
And speaking of repairing things, I’m still flush from the serious ass-whupping that Kamala Harris delivered to that tremulous baboon the other day, in front of the whole motherfucking world. I just KNEW she was gonna dribble his ass up one side of the court and down the other. And HOLY SHIT, DID SHE DELIVER!
Now did it actually fix anything? Well, it fixed his wagon, for sure. The fact that he cannot for the life of him admit that he had his saggy backside handed to him – and that he’s chicken-squawking “I WON! Look at the polls!” while citing non-existing numbers to justify the fact that he’s too fucking scared to even look her in the eye, much less debate her ever again – fills me with more than schadenfreude. It fills me with confidence that she will stomp him back to the stone age – no, make that WE will stomp him back to the stone age – when election time finally comes.
And will that fix things? Well, it will be the end of an era, at least. An era in which this stunningly-dishonest bag of bluster and bile has held America and the world as emotional hostages to his rampaging toddler whims, making cowards fall in line and inspiring dreams of wolfdom in his hordes of raging sheep.
Which brings us to religion. And a story that fills me with deep sorrow, but also hope, as this particular phase of the journey comes to an end.
Another good thing about spending nine-anna-half hours in airports and planes is that I’m nearly finished with Tim Alberta’s epic The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. It’s a 450-plus-page chronicle of the very long path to deciding that Jesus is a Republican with an AR-15. And a bracing reminder that if you believe in Jesus – as Alberta clearly does – that slapping a MAGA hat on Christ is entirely, woefully missing the whole point of Christianity.
What the author lays out here, in painstaking detail, is a 50+-year history that began with the shotgun wedding of Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” with the incipient Reagan campaign, in which right-leaning Christians were encouraged to become single-issue voters around the freshly-heated subject of abortion, in the face of post-60’s civil rights. Most particularly, a woman’s right to choose.
And what Alberta chronicles most strikingly, for me, is the way in which pastors who focused on the actual message of Christ – which is in tending to the poor and the weak, the downtrodden and discarded, and recognizing that the Kingdom He spoke of was not of this world, but of the next – got bulldozed and trampled by power-brokers who proclaimed that THIS is His Kingdom, right here. And God DAMN anybody who got in their way of claiming it.
Now I’ll be the first to admit, right here, that I am not a Christian. But I might be, were it not for people like this. Because I do dearly love God – am, in fact, an enormous fan – and give daily thanks for this life, in this world full of blessings. Although I do gotta wonder why God went and threw all these assholes into the mix! (Plus, you know, pain and torment and such.)
Point being that I would be one trillion percent in favor of good, sincere, warm-hearted Christians reclaiming their churches of choice from the clamoring 15-20% who have confused their rage with righteousness, their fear with faith, and their desire to serve with their desire to conquer. Because I know for a fact that there are many, many WONDERFUL CHRISTIANS on this Earth, who really DO care for others, and really DO seek to walk Christ’s path, and really DO try to make the world a kinder, gentler, more loving and merciful place.
And that is a good thing. A very, very good thing. A thing that the world needs more of.
Reading Tim Alberta’s book gives me hope. Because in the course of chronicling the devil’s bargain that is Christian Nationalism, he also reveals the tender threads of devotion that still strongly remain. It is to those threads that I swear my support. Because I want this world to be a better place, too.
It is now 6:30 of a new morning. Tonight, I’ll be celebrating the 40th anniversary of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST. at the lovely Alex Theater in Glendale, Which may not seem like a very Christian thing to do. But it will be fun. And it is Friday the 13th! And they flew me in, for which I am eternally grateful.
Even though my original flight got delayed, due to mechanical failure.
Which, thank God, they found and fixed.
HAVE A BEAUTIFUL DAY, EVERYBODY!!!
Yer pal in the trenches,
Skipp
Oh, John Skipp. I love you so much. Thank you so much for this beautiful post!!!! Hand to my heart, tears to my eyes... and the windmills of my mind. mwah!!!
Have a great trip and time tonight at the movie anniversary and in town briefly! Sending you lotsa love as ever! Xox