So instead of complaining about how bad Trump is and how he is taking us down the dark road of authoritarianism, let’s ponder another cheerful topic, death. Now that Embry and I live at Collington, a continuing care retirement community of over 300 independent living units plus assisted living and memory care, it is impossible to ignore that all human beings die. Collington has over 400 residents whose average age has got to be in the mid-eighties or even older.  Between 35 and 45 people die every year averaging close to one every week. You might conclude that being reminded on a regular basis that there is a beginning and an end to human life is depressing, but  it is not. That is just the way it is for us Homo sapiens on the planet Earth. Most old folks here at Collington—as is true I suspect for all CCRCs– are survivors. We have lived long lives, outliving our life expectancy at birth by many years. Many here like us have much to be thankful for—wonderful children and grandchildren, satisfying careers, strong friendships, and generally good health. We all have also have made  mistakes and have had our share of hard knocks. Many of us have lost spouses. But I would say that in general we are the lucky ones. Most of us, I also suspect, focus not on the inevitable end of our lives but rather on getting as much out of life as we can in this moment, running our last lap. I have called it squeezing the last drops out of the lemon.

It is also true that the checking out process is much more difficult and painful for some more than it is for others. Disability, pain and memory loss are the major culprits, and few get a totally free ride. Like many my age, I occasionally glance through the obituaries in The Washington Post and am amazed at how many obits compiled by funeral homes start off with “so-and-so died peacefully, surrounded by friends and loving family.” Really? I don’t think that is the way it usually works, and sadly for some the experience is very painful. Some have been dealt very bad hands for the checking out process. Life (and death) is not fair.

The question lurking in the shadows for all of us humans– but especially us octogenarians and older–is, of course, what happens next. This is where I get into trouble. Now as some may know, I am a “cradle Episcopalian” who has attended church regularly for my entire life except for a couple of lapses due to church fatigue. Embry has been more of a stalwart than me mainly because she loves singing in the choir. In any event we have hung in there through the various ups and downs, scandals and recoveries of the Episcopal churches we have attended. I even graduated from Union Theological Seminary in New York City and for a short while was a “postulant” in the Episcopal Church headed for ordination. Fortunately for me, my bishop was a feisty old guy with a big heart, a good sense of humor and a keen eye for people like me who had trouble with all the theological baggage and no business becoming an Episcopal priest. He did me a huge favor by advising me that for every year spent at Union— “that heretical Protestant seminary”- I would do “penance” at Nashotah House, an Anglo Catholic, hardcore, orthodox Episcopal seminary in the backwoods of Wisconsin someplace. Easy call and we parted ways.

Where I get into trouble is that even though I have stuck it out in church attendance, I continue to have the same nagging questions that so many others have about what happens next and what this short, fragile life is really all about.  We Homo sapiens are just one of many thousands of species who over a course of millions of years evolved and eventually clawed our way to the top of the food chain.  We live on one small, beautiful planet circling a run-of-the-mill star in a nondescript galaxy in a universe that scientists now believe contains something like a trillion galaxies. All this began with a “Big Bang” some 13.8 billion years ago and is still expanding with mysterious “dark matter” and black holes somehow holding it all together.

Can any of us Homo sapiens really figure out what all this means? Sorry, above our pay grade.

And yet we think we are it? That no “advanced life” exists anywhere else?  That a divine deity we call “God” created us in “His image” and that when we die—if we believe the “right things”—we will go to heaven and live with Him for eternity? Well, that is what many who call themselves Christians say they believe. And many of those people also believe that if you do not believe the same thing they do you are going to spend eternity burning in hell, which some still believe is located near the center of the Earth.

Please.

Now you know why I was not ordained.

This year I attended a funeral of a dear friend. At the end of the service, the Presbyterian minister proclaimed that he had no doubt whatsoever, “absolutely none,” that this fine person now deceased was sitting in heaven with God on his right and Jesus on his left. When I complained to a friend that I thought this was going a bit too far, he responded, “Joe, if you do not believe this, number one, you aren’t a Christian and number two, if you do not believe that, life is not worth living.”

I immediately changed the subject.

But what you don’t believe is not a substitute for what you do believe and here I have to admit I fall woefully short. I do not have an answer as to what happens to us after we die. The answer to this, I believe, is that we have no choice but to live with the uncertainty. What we can do is celebrate the lives of those we lose, mourn for their loss and comfort those in pain. And we can be thankful for our own lives and those we love on this extraordinary planet. 

I know that there are those reading this that are asking, ok, I get it, but why has this guy stuck with church all these years. I have been asked this question more than once. My answer is that religion in general–and Christianity in particular–offers glimpses of a dimension of human existence that falls into the category of the spiritual and that this dimension is real and part of what it means to be human. I am not giving up on that, and being associated with a church, warts and all, has been for me a pathway to access the spiritual dimension of life and to be part of a loving and supportive community. And the Chrisitan message of unconditional love, the call to love your neighbor, to respond to those in need, and to try to make the world a kinder, fairer, and gentler place is enough to keep me going.

At least for now. Before it is my turn to say goodbye.

 

  

 

July 4, 2025 is now history. Our beloved country as a functioning democracy is officially on life support. All that Trump wanted he got and now officially owns the Republican Party. All kinds of postmortems are coming in, all of them bleak. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants will be rounded up in the months ahead, many sent to “dark prisons” in places like El Salvador and Sudan. The “Alligator Alcatraz” prison in the swamps of Florida is supposed to open immediately housing 5,000 undocumented people—in cages! Other similar giant makeshift prisons are planned around the country. There are more than 13 million undocumented people in the United States. Many industries—like construction, hospitals, long term care and assisted living, hotels, restaurants, and agriculture depend on them. If Trump’s goal is to get rid of all of them in four years, that would mean arresting, locking up, and deporting about 65,000 people a week or over 9,300 every day. That probably won’t happen but a lot of suffering will. The “Big Beautiful Bill,” which is now the law of the land, has  billions in funding for immigration and the expansion of ICE into what many describe as Trump’s personal police force and the largest federal police force in U.S. history. Trump now has the money to make a lot of this happen.

The immigration issue ranks at the top of my list of Trump atrocities because of the pain and suffering it will inflict on people whose only “crime” was to try to make a better life for themselves and their families. Embry and I are very close to several undocumented immigrant families. They now live in a world of terror.

But that is just the beginning. To make permanent and expand the massive tax breaks for the ultra rich, deep cuts will be made to Medicaid, the ACA (Obamacare) subsidies, and to SNAP (food stamps). What is going to happen to the people who depend on these services? The CBO estimates that over 17 million people will be affected. Many hospitals serving inner city neighborhoods and rural areas will likely close.

The irony here, of course, is that Trump and his allies now proclaim that they are now the party of the working class. The working class did shift in large numbers to vote for Trump, responding to his anti-establishment, populist rhetoric. Well, Trump’s policies will devastate many of the working class people who switched from Democrat to Republican. Classic bait and switch.

And then there is the dismantling of USAID and the termination of most of the vital aid to struggling people in Africa, parts of Asia, and struggling countries throughout the world. Experts estimate the lives lost could total hundreds of thousands or higher. And what about all the USAID workers who are now without jobs? What about the transformation of the government workforce from professional public servants to Trump sycophants and MAGA loyalists?

The list continues: ending subsidies for combatting climate change initiatives, providing subsidies for polluting industries, attacks on education, especially elite colleges and universities, drastically cutting funding for science and medical research, attacks on all things LGBTQ, trans gender, and “woke,” and massive amounts of dollars for expansion of the military. Trump’s excessive tariffs are supposed to start any day. And this is just for starters. With a Congress controlled by Republican Trump sycophants and a friendly U.S. Supreme Court, who knows what other nightmares Trump and his followers will come up with?

And, finally, there is prediction by the CBO, that these initiatives will add at least $5 trillion to the national debt, a dire situation which no reputable economist believes is sustainable without wrecking the economy.

Have you heard enough?

Well, what are you (we) going to do about it? Friends, we are witnessing the igniting of a five alarm fire. My generation has been lucky. We missed World War II, and most of those pursuing higher education got out of the draft during the War in Vietnam. The economy has prospered, and the country has made great advances in science, medicine and technology. We have started to address latent racism and have strengthened social and healthcare safety nets. Jobs have been plentiful for those seeking them. We have  avoided full scale war and a nuclear holocaust. And we also had the civil rights movement, which both Embry and I were involved in and which  we both see as a pivotal moment in our lives.

At the same time economic disparities have worsened starting in the early 1980s. Racism and prejudice against people with different appearances or sexual orientations stubbornly persist.  Working class incomes have stagnated, and there has been backlash from the working class regarding perceived elitism by those with college and advanced degrees.

I think that the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s followed by the Antiwar Movement of the mid 1970s may offer some hope for the future and some guidelines as to how to begin to extinguish the five alarm fire unleased by Trump and his Republican and Supreme Court allies.

 Here are the lessons learned:

Don’t expect the Democrats to put the fire out. Neither Democrats nor Republicans were part of the Civil Rights Movement until very late in the effort. The movement was grass roots and   started in earnest in 1961 with the  freedom rides to Alabama and the sit ins in Greensboro, NC, and quickly spread to many other parts of the South. However, these actions were not spontaneous. There were lots of people and organizations involved in the planning and execution of the resistance effort—the NAACP, CORE, SCLC, SNCC, the National Urban League, and several other groups. Progressive churches and other religious institutions were also important. To fight Trump and his agenda, we need organizations united behind the effort and we need money and sound planning. This is starting to happen. The No Kings Protests attracted over four million people. But more organizations need to step up  and more planning needs to happen. Organizations like the ACLU, CASA, SPLC are leading in pushing back on immigration, but more will be needed along with resources and money.

We also need strong, charismatic leaders. The leaders of the Civil Rights Movement made a huge difference. Martin Luther King was the most prominent but there were many more—James Farmer of CORE, Stockley Carmichael and John Lewis of SNCC, Whitney Young of the Urban League, Malcom X, Caesar Chavez and many others. Most of these leaders were at the time under 40. We need younger people to step up, speak out, and take leadership roles.

We need nonviolent mass demonstrations and nonviolent civil disobedience.

We need massive voter registration drives for the 2026 elections.

We need celebrities and progressive business leaders to speak out.

We need mainstream progressive religious groups—Protestants, Catholics, Jews and Muslims–to speak out.

Most important we need to win back the working class and motivate them to get Democrats elected in 2026.

All is not lost. Trump will surely overplay his hand. What he is doing is enormously unpopular. The charge for the Opposition is to broadcast what his policies are doing, how they are destroying people’s lives, and how they will ultimately destroy our democracy. Don’t give up hope. The 2026 midterm elections are just over a year away. I predict that with a strong resistance and voter registration and motivation effort Democrats will retake the House and the Senate and put an end to this madness before it destroys more lives and our democracy.

In the end, however, we all have to step up to the plate. There is a great quote from Margaret Meade, “Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”