What should have happened at St. John’s Church in DC

After he had his “hired muscle” forcefully remove peaceful protesters from the Lafayette Park area, with tear gas, pepper spray, and beatings, Trump and his lackeys went for their political photo op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.  He held a bible.  He could have opened it and read the following, but of course he didn’t:

Proverbs 26:11 – “As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.”

Proverbs 25:28 – “A man without self-control is like a city broken into and without WALLS.”

Titus 3:2 – “Tell them…to slander no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward ALL PEOPLE.”

James 1:26 – “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.”

Matthew 15:7-9 – “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the COMMANDMENTS OF MEN.’ “

Titus 1:16 – “They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works.  They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.”

Matthew 23:27 – “Woe to you…hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.”

© 2020 Gregory V Driscoll

The Kingdom of Heaven is within you

Sumptuous living, lavish surroundings,
the manicured gardens of Versailles,
and the mansions of aristocrats, or
the splendid and stately edifices
of the captains of industry, ‘the masters
of the universe’ holed up in
guarded penthouse towers, and their lackeys
in the halls of legislatures, in executive mansions,
concocting death-dealing plans for the masses,
fed to them with saccharine words
and shibboleths rebutted by reality –
all these hoover up the daily labor,
the lives, the very dreams of common folk
toiling endlessly for comparative pittances,
children working in the fields without shoes,
old men bent double carrying loads
that would crush a Koch, Trump, or Buffett;
old women foraging the hills for firewood
in Africa or Asia; young women
and young men selling themselves to sex tourists
who travel halfway across the world
to Bangkok or Manila, Barbados or Brazil;
Mexicans and Salvadorans
sneaking across the long border
for a better life, their countries ruined
by the drug trade feeding the addicts
in every neighborhood of El Norte;
ruined by the shell-game of free trade,
by despots trained in that same El Norte…
Let us turn to living by the simplest
of standards: Love your neighbor as yourself.
Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.
If we study the deep meaning of these,
not their Sunday school gloss, we’ll find in them
the roots of our humanity,
and true religion, and the beginning
of the end of all our ills and rancor.

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© Gregory V Driscoll  2011