Today's photographs are a redux of yesterday. I went back to the reflecting pond to see how much the lotus blossoms had changed overnight. Down at the end of today's journal entry I fooled around with some of the images to make some changes of my own. Photoshop is a great playground.

My friend, Irene, shared a card she got from a friend; and the way good things that are shared often become even better with the sharing, the idea expressed in subtle letters on the front of the card seems even more important after it has percolating for a couple of days in my head. Across the top of the card in big letters: I WOULD RATHER HAVE A MIND OPENED BY WONDER THAN ONE CLOSED BY BELIEF. I bird-dogged the quote the way it is possible to do these days with almost anything by asking Google to find the person credited with saying it. Someone named Gerry Spence, a lawyer, said it in a book called How to Argue and Win Every Time: At Home, At Work, In Court, Everywhere.

This BLOG writing isn’t about winning every time. I haven’t read Mr. Spence’s book or read extensively in his BLOG. Actually, I’d like to have a conversation with him so I could tell him how much I like what he said, but I’d like also to tell him that I see in the title and subtitle of his book a glaring contradiction. Perhaps I’ll do some more exploring and to see if he always argues to win, the way television lawyers do in court.

I like a fight as well as the next guy. I like to win. When I play a game, I don’t go all soft if I’m winning and start to wish the other people in the game would win. If I slip up and start to lose the advantage, it’s not on purpose. No Sir! I want the biggest numbers on my dominoes. I want to dunk the ball. I want to win. So, I’m not all cuddly and nice in competition... but a pick-up basketball game or dominoes with friends isn’t the same thing at all as a discussion about what’s happening in Washington or about what this or that church is promoting. I try to remind myself that I’m getting into dangerous territory in discussions about religion or politics when I feel myself wanting to prove I’m right... right now and have always been right and always intend to be right because I belong to the one true church and am a certifiable, dues-paying member of the political party which has the correct answers in all matters of state.

So, in spite of my nature and as hard as it is to do, I would rather have my mind opened by wonder than closed by belief. I was taught at a young age that the religious institution to which my family belonged was the one with the right answers especially in matters of God and Being and Relationships and that when there was any disagreement between the requirements of the law on a subject and the church’s pronouncements about what God said on a subject, I should rest assured that the church’s way was the right way. If the law said a woman should be able to choose whether she would have an abortion and the church said she should not have that right, I was expected to believe the church. If the church and the law disagree on whether or not only a man and a woman may enter into the legal civil relationship called marriage, I was expected to believe that the church, by God, had settled the matter correctly. If the state has no problem with men or women of whatever race or sexual orientation serving in any employment, but the church says men or women of whatever race or nationality or age whose sexual orientation is hetero and not homo may be employed in clerical CEO positions, I was taught to side with the church. I was taught wrong.

It’s hard for me to watch what’s happening in Washington as Democrats and Republicans wrestle over the fairly simple matter of raising the debt ceiling, which the country has done routinely many times. Rigid, closed-minded partisanship and shrewd political gamesmanship are taking my country right up to the edge of economic catastrophe. This is a difficult time for all of us. It certainly is a difficult time for me. Anybody who knows me or has read what I write knows that I can be fairly described as a bleeding-heart liberal, some would say bordering-on-the-edge of socialism Democrat. It’s true. I have a very difficult time reconciling hard-edged capitalism with the “do unto others what you would have them do unto you” central theme of the Christian Gospel or, for that matter, with the basic outlines for a fair and just civil society intentioned in the Constitution of the United States of America. However, whenever or wherever being a Democrat tempts me to close my mind to possibilities and ideas for solving problems for the good of my country, I hope I shall have the courage of my convictions and keep my mind present and open to all possibilities... and if it should ever become necessary, to stop calling myself a Democrat. Being a Democrat doesn’t define me. Being a Methodist doesn’t define me.

And just to satisfy my tendency to sometimes be contrary, I’m not going to go back and recast that very clumsy next-to-last sentence in the paragraph above with it’s however, whenever, wherever all lined up in a row the way Mrs. Laney, my high school English teacher would suggest, not insist, but suggest I do. I loved that woman because she had learned the art of suggestion and didn’t need to always insist. And, yes, yes, yes, I know “to sometimes be” and “to always insist” are split infinitives... because Mrs. Laney taught me that, and in those days she suggested it was better to avoid splitting infinitives.