GIVE THANKS FOR IMMIGRANTS by Bill Droel

 

Our flag is the number one symbol of our country. Its design of 13 stripes and 

50 stars means unity through pluralism. It represents our belief in a layered government

with authority given by citizenry.

 The flag stands for all the positive values of our experiment in democracy.

There are other symbols of our country. This month features pictures and displays of the harvest rituals and feasts that occurred in the early 1600s in Massachusetts, Virginia and elsewhere. These serene images obviously compress history. They are influenced by famous paintings, including one from 1915,The First Thanksgiving by Jean Louis Ferris (1893-1930) and one from 1943, the still popular Four Freedoms by Norman Rockwell (1894-1978). Thanksgiving was celebrated regionally until 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) designated a national day of Thanksgiving to “Almighty God…for fruitful fields and healthful skies.”

The Statue of Liberty is another symbol of our beautiful, bounteous country. It is a fitting image to link with Thanksgiving.

Frederic Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904), whose Italian parents immigrated to France, was involved with a circle of people who were aware of how France aided our struggle for independence. They considered the United States a model for their own movement for liberty. They raised money to donate a statue symbolizing their appreciation for our country. They wanted the spirit of their gift to keep moving in the sense that the United States would support and sustain liberty among freedom-seeking people around the world.

A preview of the gift appeared at the Philadelphia Expo in 1876, but it took until 1880 before a complete statue was delivered to the United States embassy in Paris.

It wasn’t until 1886, however, that the statue was dedicated in New York’s Upper Bay. In the meantime a private fundraising campaign in our country was needed to secure the statue’s site, particularly to finance its pedestal. Part of the fundraising was the auction of a 14-line sonnet, The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus (1849-1887). Her ancestors were Jewish-Russians who emigrated here before our Revolutionary War. At the time her poem was commissioned, Lazarus, sufficiently known in literary circles, was volunteering at Emigrant Aid Society on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The poem was mostly neglected but in 1903 it was written on a bronze tablet and only in 1945 was it mounted on the statue’s pedestal. The poem and the statue came to represent the generosity of our country’s residents. So thankful, in fact, that we generously open our hearts to “…your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

The statue’s symbolism of thanksgiving is, of course, reinforced by its proximity to Ellis Island, where from 1892 to 1954 many freedom-seeking immigrants entered our country, including my grandmother. (For the record, Ellis Island is mostly in New Jersey and Liberty Island itself is in New York.)

Each generation of arrivals enriched our country with creativity, social capital, unique culture, patriotic service and faith. These are their gift to subsequent generations. Thus our table prayer on November 27^th  2025, is not only one of thanks for God’s bounty, and thanks for the privilege of residing in this country, and thanks for the family and friends gathered, but also thanks for our ancestors and for those new arrivals who keep the gift moving.

P.S. Fr. Gary Graf of Chicago is walking all the way from the boyhood home of Robert Prevost/Pope Leo XIV in Dalton, Illinois to Ellis Island to raise awareness about the plight of today’s immigrants. Follow him at www.ourladyoftheheights.org.

 

 

NIHILISM, the lack of a point of reference

 

       
                                                                                        Painting by Albrecht Altdorfer

Nietzsche said, “God is Dead.” 

                                                                                                         Nietzsche :  Wikipedia

The question:  what is the point of reference for Trump? 

The answer:  ethno-nationalism, politics, America First! 

But it will fall apart, it is not inclusive. 

                                                                                                       Guernica

Let’s bring back the Shema, love of God and neighbor

God is love

politics

the Common Good! 

a path to joy.

Julius Schnorr von Carosfeld 1819

Joy and social stability:  the Wedding Feast of Cana

We Hold These Truths

It is apparent that Governor Cox of Utah believes, "We hold these truths that all men are created equal and have the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  (See Gary Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg, 1992)

To move forward, can we agree?  

Love Revisited by William Washabaugh

So, after considering two thousand years of history, and after surveying debates about the amorous needs of the sovereign self, we arrive at two quite different conceptions of love. On the one hand, there is love between sovereign selves, the popular conception of love that is mediated by desirous gaze. Lovers, seeing each other from afar, discern beautiful qualities, and then they come together in order to experience existential completion as the beauty of their beloveds compensates for the lacks and deficiencies that they see in themselves.

On the other hand, I propose that love is a corporeal entanglement through which “metastable” lovers become persons —personhood, in this account, being a continuously developing, never resolved state. Lovers are never wholly relieved of the tensions that prevail from their first moments of life.lxxvii Their negotiated intertwinements persist throughout life. And so, it has to be for persons who are processes rather than substances, and who are verbs rather than nouns—as Ulysses S. Grant confessed on his deathbed, when he said, “I think I am a verb.”

At every stage in their development as persons, lovers deserve care and respect. Even after their life-courses are apparently completed, they deserve care because loving entanglements never end. They are endlessly ramifying, never completely discernible intertwinements that are not terminated, even in death.lxxviii Lovers, I argue, develop into persons by engaging each other. They nudge, tug, and wrestle. With various tactics of demand, appeasement, conflict, and reconciliation, lovers accommodate their needs with the needs of their beloveds.

Breastfeeding models such engagement.

Entangled lovers, I contend, are gifts to each other. True, they tug and wrestle, but their wrestling is itself a component of their giftedness. Sometimes their gifts to each other are tied up in ribbons of exasperation, but they are gifts, nonetheless. And the exasperation itself is instrumental in advancing the development of both the giver and gifted.

The thing about gifts, though, is that the giving and the gifter can sometimes be hidden from view. A gift can be grabbed, embraced, and coveted as if it were a thing unto itself. Such a coveted gift can seem like self-standing object.  But its self-standing-ness is just an appearance; it is an illusion that hides the relational saturation of the gift that anthropologists since Marcel Mauss have long recognized.lxxix The giver and the giving are brought together in the gift, suggesting that the gift, like the loving person, is a process rather than an object, and a verb rather than a noun.

Up to this point I have portrayed human love as a saturated experience, one that is infused with entanglements and intertwinements that bring lovers/persons into their unsteady existence. However, there is no good reason for maintaining an exclusively human characterization of love.

I think, for example, of fungi and trees. Their entanglement is no less loving than the entanglement of woman and infant at the breast. Both involve negotiated endeavors focused on the task of supplying nutrients to the self and the other.

If we find ourselves wincing at the thought of “trees in love,”.lxxx it may be because our Western history has steered us away from what lineage-centered people have known without knowing, namely, that life is all about intertwinement, entanglement, and connection; and that true love is to be found nowhere else but in negotiated connections.

Breastfeeding models love, so too do “trees in love.” So, we have come full circle to the conclusion that lovers love each other as parents love their children, as babies love nursing women, and as trees love fungi. Entanglement is love, and love is entanglement. True love is the experience of attunement to the subtle resonances that prevail in and around metastatic processes. This attunement may include romantic feelings and passionate yearnings, but its primary feature is intertwinement.

We are not banishing eros but rather upgrading it. When people kiss on the mouth, like the lovers in Song of Songs, they do indeed become bewitched, bedazzled, starry-eyed, with “fever in the morning, and fever all through the night.” But much more importantly, “they become what they love.”lxxxi 

“They become “embedded in, partially defined by, and sharing a common fate with larger natural and social contexts.”lxxxii Lovers become one, but they retain their distinctiveness. They become one in the sense that a violin and its bow form one instrument. They are functionally complementary, each requiring the other for its completion. They vibrate with one another. lxxxiii

Lovers “encounter and experience the world other than through a solitary consciousness.”lxxxiv They experience “connection with difference rather than union into sameness.”lxxxv This experience of loving connection is arguably analogous to God’s own experience, that is, the perichoresis of the Trinity which models for us the sublunary dances of our entanglements.lxxxvi The three persons of the Trinity are entangled and intertwined; they resonate with each other.

Perhaps now we can appreciate the Biblical observation that “God is love.” It is a metaphor for the persistently resonant cosmos. “God” is our name for ubiquitous and unending relationality.  And, by the same token, we can now interpret Matthew (22:37): “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This new commandment means that we should become engaged in prickly negotiations—like infants at the breast—with everyone and everything that bears down on us.

Just as Jacob engaged that divine being in Genesis, so we are enjoined to wrestle with others throughout our lives. We develop in response to the half-nelsons we put on others and the arm-locks they put on us. Such is the nature of entangled love.  

William Washabaugh, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

<https://sites.uwm.edu/wash>.

 

Praying with Queen Esther By Gianluigi Gugliermetto   8/21/2025

Meditating upon prayer and the four paths, I realize that in our historical moment it is especially the via negativa that must be made present to everybody’s consciousness. It is terribly offensive to see people dancing and having fun in TV commercials while an entire people is scheduled to be deported — or exterminated if they don’t accept deportation.

It is tragically ironic that in the biblical book of Esther we read the same identical story: the powerful decided a date by which all Jews must be gone from the Persian empire, or else they would be slaughtered (Esther 3:7). Queen Esther then immediately started fasting and foregoing all pleasures.

“What Is the Esther Fast? The Power of Absolute Fasting Explained” @DailyGraceReflections-u9n

This must be seen as an expression of awareness, a refusal to pretend that nothing is happening — even though she would not be affected personally by the impending events (Esther 4:16-17).   Substitute the word “Jews” in the previous paragraph with the word “Palestinians” and you get both what we are living through right now and what prayer in the via negativa means at the present time.   The story continues with Esther taking the situation in her own hands and risking her life by interfering with the king’s decision of expulsion/ extermination. By a mix of skillful diplomacy and sheer luck, she is pivotal in reversing the situation and saving all the Jews (Esther 5-8).   This is a clear expression of via creativa — her daring skillfullness — which results in a via transformativa action, i.e. a positive result of social change.

As thousands of Israelis protest the ongoing genocide in a general strike, Netanyahu pursues plans to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza. Channel 4 News.

But Queen Esther can obtain what she does largely because she is an insider/outsider. She is part of the ruling class, and yet she also belongs to the oppressed people. She is in the position to forget the last part, yet she places herself in deep solidarity with those

who suffer. I wonder if there is anybody today who can play such a part on the global stage. Is it, perhaps, the huge crowd of Israelis who have taken the streets in the last few days?   Empathy cannot just be words or mere feelings. The via negativa prayer practices are very important because they help us to get out of our stiffened mental schemes and experience what others are experiencing in naked, unfiltered reality. Fasting, imaginative meditations, deep listening to first-hand witnesses, wailing in community… at least some of these things seem to me unavoidable at this time as they help us involve all of our being.   But sorrow can swallow us up and thus become another trap at the service of the empire. Even more is required of us. Our via negativa practices must be followed by some via creativa efforts — just as Esther employed all her skills and powers, showing the heart of a lioness. Show up to a protest! Or do whatever you can do.

Our via negativa practices must also be preceded by some via positiva exercises. At the beginning of this meditation I expressed my disgust at watching commercials with people at ease which feel like scorn (see Psalm 123:4). But now I also say that unless our

Storing up for dry times ahead: camel trains pause to rest by the Nile in Egypt. Photo by Rab Lawrence on Flickr.

bodies are well-fed they cannot afford a fast; unless our minds are pleased by beauty, they cannot afford to hear stories of utter misery; unless our spirits are lifted up high, they cannot afford to descend to hell.   The lion’s courage which Matthew has been invoking in his DMs must both precede and follow our prayer exercises in the via negativa.   Personally — as the decree of utter misery on Palestinians has been signed by those evil people in Tel Aviv — I need the courage of a lion to wake up, do my physical exercises, remember to eat good food, and enjoy my walks.   As Matthew reminded us recently (see DM August 12) all prophets, all spiritual warriors, need to take care of themselves. This is the via positiva root of our spirituality that we should never forget, and yet is only the beginning of the whole path.

Poverty Is More Than Lack of Money by Bill Droel

Unconditional cash assistance to the poor may not do any good. That is a conclusion from a rigorous study, Baby’s First Years (www.babysfirstyears.com).  An experiment, supervised by eight researchers, gave $333 per month for 48months to 1,000 needy families from the Twin Cities, Omaha, New Orleans and New York City. A control group received $20 per month. Results were additionally compared with the population at large. (No government money was involved.)

The experiment yielded no evident improvement in children’s language skills or their cognitive development. Neither the child’s health nor social and emotional behavior was any better than in families lacking the subsidy. The parents receiving the $333 experienced no reduction in stress. Most of these parents were single mothers. Most were Black, Mexican-American or recent immigrants.

The researchers were disappointed in the lack of improvement because they had read positive accounts about the federal cash subsidies given during the worst of Covid-19.Contrary to some interpretations, it is important to point out what the study doesnot show:

 There is no evidence whatsoever in this study nor in many others that Medicaid, SNAP and other federal programs are worthless.

 There is no evidence in this study that the participants were lazy or that they spent the cash foolishly.

 There is no evidence in this study that a work requirement would improve family life.Critics do raise reasonable questions about the study:

 Might inflation and higher rents make its 2025 outcome less encouraging than the reported results of the earlier Covid-19 subsidies?

 Might the sample size have been too small, or the duration of the benefits too short, or might measurement of the children look better as those children grow older?

Columnist David Brooks (N.Y. Times, 8/3/25) refers to the First Years study to conclude that “if a child’s social order is broken, federal money will not help.” To properly flourish, he continues, “all humans need to grow up in a secure container, within which they can craft their lives. The social order consists of a stable family, a safe and coherent neighborhood, a vibrant congregational and civic life, a reliable body of laws, a set of shared values that neighbors can use to build healthy communities and a conviction that there exists moral truth.” Instead, looking at our society we “see families splinter or never form, neighborhood life decay, churches go empty, friends die of addictions, downtowns become vacant, a national elite grow socially and morally detached.”

How to combat poverty? We must refute our culture’s presumption that all problems are caused by an individual’s defect. It is equally erroneous to assume that most individuals have the capacity to improve if they simply so choose. “To understand the cause of poverty we must look beyond the poor,” writes Matthew Desmond in Poverty, By America (Penguin Random, 2023).

The most significant factor for a child to have a “secure container” is a two-parent household. It can be any configuration—two married parents, either different gender or the same gender, likewise two stable unmarried parents or foster parents or grandparents. But a simplistic conclusion about single parenthood is wrong. If, for example, everyone was to get married, poverty would not disappear. Single parenthood is not in itself “a major cause of poverty in America,” as Desmond puts it. Marriage alone does not create the orderliness that children need. Marriage is a big positive for families in the context of other securities. When the poor have real economic opportunity and other buffers, “marriage typically follows,” Desmond concludes.

The other significant factor for a child’s security and growth is parental involvement in their education, no matter in this case if that parent is single or in a stable relationship. Thus, society’s job is to allow parents the wherewithal to supervise homework and to meaningfully interact with teachers. Society withers when economic inequality with its large sector of precarious employment makes a healthy home life too difficult. Our economy and culture must thus be reformed in ways that permit parents to network with one another through school sports or student clubs, through relational congregations, through effective community organizations, through bona fide unions and the like.

Droel is editor at National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL

60629).

THE SHEMA: A FORGOTTEN GUIDE

 By Bill Lange

The Shema is the basic Hebrew prayer cited by Jesus of Nazareth in the synoptic Gospels. It is a self-evident prayer for all. 

"שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ יְיָ אֶחָד"

(Sh'ma Yisra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad)

Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. -Deuteronomy 6:4

Love your neighbor as yourself:  I am the Lord. -Leviticus 19:18

Would we have the tragedies in Gaza if the Shema were remembered, understood, and felt?