Holy Week, the Sacred, the Ridiculous

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I saw the F-word in the New York Times on Sunday, at least it was in my copy, and I don’t mean “fake,” and it was spelled out, all four letters, as posted online by the Commander in Chief in his early morning harangue against Iran, and though he considers the Times fake news, the White House hasn’t denied that he wrote it.

The Times didn’t use dashes to soften the shock for their younger readers but spelled out the word, I think, in order to convey the tone of the post, which the Times described as “blistering” but which most readers would describe as insane. If you got a note from your neighbor saying “you’ll be living in hell,” you’d call the cops and they’d come.

An evangelical preacher might say “living in hell” from the pulpit but he wouldn’t use the F-word with it. This was after the Easter luncheon at which an evangelist compared the Boss to Jesus Christ and the look on the Boss’s face was priceless: he tried to look modest but he looked quite pleased. This was the lunch at which he said, “If I were king, I could do a lot more.”

Still, it was a surprise on Easter morning to consider the possibility that the President of the United States is out of his mind and wonder how the Founders intended for us to deal with it. The 25th Amendment allows the Vice President with a majority of the Cabinet to declare the President unfit, but what would convince this particular V-P and Cabinet that such is so? Mr. Trump walking out to the front gate without his pants and drooling and shouting unintelligible things with a finger up his nose? I doubt that would be sufficient.

His post Easter morning was the sort of thing a First Lady ought to deal with, put her hand on his shoulder, and say, “Darling, this will do you no good whatsoever and please think of the children.” The man is venturing into dark territory. “Disapprove” is a mild term for what’s happening, the polls should think of adding “Embarrassed by” and maybe “Loathe.”

There have been dishonest presidents like Buchanan and Andrew Johnson, wretched ones like Fillmore and Pierce, fools like Harrison and Taylor, but never an outright nutcase and narcissist on top of it. Conservative columnists are turning on him lest their college degrees be revoked and perhaps their high school diplomas. And the historians are waiting in the wings. And somewhere in the West Wing lurks the insider who will write the first tell-all.

Meanwhile, spring is here, which is the prevailing reality. Trees are blossoming, grass is greening, this little pebble of Earth makes its way around the sun, the moon following like a faithful dog, and at night we can gaze through the mists and see, or sense, an infinity of stars, billions of galaxies, some of them billions of light-years away, back before Earth existed. Church was full on Sunday, my fellow Christians celebrating Resurrection, which science has so far not verified. What the Creator put us on this pebble to achieve is for us to discover in the brief time we have, but it surely has to do with the enlightenment of the soul that leads us to a state of wonder at the beauty of the Creation, including the humanity He placed here and created in His Likeness, so we’re told, though this week one does wonder about that.

I come here in holy communion with a hall full of believers, semi-believers, unbelievers trying to believe, unbelievers married to believers. It is a transcendent moment and you’re no longer in ZIP code 10024 or even the U.S. of A. — you’re in the Universe. I come for clarity and that begins with gratitude and then I put my multitude of sins in a drawer and close it. Sins of omission, dereliction, capitulation, ostentation, isolation, not to mention self-flagellation, and when I turn around for the Exchange of Peace, I shake hands and feel I’m blessing all Manhattan.

I don’t cry at movies, but I do cry at church. The line from the psalm, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.” I weep at the promise of resurrection and we sing, “Shall we gather at the river where bright angels’ feet have trod.” We are washed in the river and then we come back to America at war.