I Love Bernie Sanders: Here's Why I'm not voting for him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St7lqsHGBvg

Let all of us liberals be honest. We love Bernie Sanders. The man is a just man with the right ideas. Ideas that need to be addressed NOW. How best to fix health care. How to make Wall Street work for the American public instead of just profiting from it. Bring the people a fair shake and an honest dollar.

He's not spinning any bull, or just saying the right things for a primary.  What Bernie Sanders believes and speaks on, he has been saying for close to 50 years. He holds to his convictions, and will work tirelessly to make his ideas a reality.

This is all wonderful.

But I'm voting for Hillary.

"You're just doing this because you think Bernie can't be elected!"
"How could you stand by this woman?"
"If you believe in Bernie, fight for his ideals, and they WILL become real!"

The answers to all these are:
No.
I like Hillary Clinton.
And the last is the crux of why I'm not voting for Bernie Sanders. It's not that I don't believe in him.

I don't believe in you.

I don't believe in you folks. The Bernie Sanders supporters. #Feelthebern, everyone who has decided to fall in love with an admittedly great man, I don't trust you to make his dream real.

Here's what Bernie Sanders is going to face for his ideas to become law.
1. An opposition congress run by men that will not compromise on anything (including their own ideas).
2. Corporate power with unlimited voice and lobbying ability.
3. Doctors, pharmaceuticals, drug companies who truly do not want to change.
4. The elite who are feeling demonized for apparent success in finance.

And most importantly, 5. An electorate that follows what's trending.

Bernie Sanders' ideas requires one thing to succeed: help from the populace. Men and women who will stand up and say enough is enough, we will not continue like we have before. This is what Bernie Sanders has been saying he needs from the very beginning.

But it won't just be for the election. It will be EVERY DAY.

In the cold days of February 2017 as he tries to reinstate Glass-Steagall and break up these big banks. In March, where if he does indeed have to nominate a Supreme Court justice, he will have to deal with a Senate that won't want to elect anybody. In the long summer as he works on health care reform. On an on for the four, maybe even eight years that President Bernie Sanders needs support.

This aid will not just be about tweets and likes on Facebook. Change won't happen from scrolling through a News feed on the bus ride home. It's getting up at 6 AM to stand in the rallies screaming for change. Calling congressman's offices and promising to pull support from them if they don't follow the president. Boycotting companies that try underhanded tactics. Doing all of this for years on end, with no guarantee that it will truly lead anywhere.

In other words, being an active electorate.

"Sure, I can do that! Absolutely, and why? Because I believe in him and his message!"

Great words. I don't believe you.

I'm going with the woman who will get things done herself. Not rely on someone who just found out six months ago about politics.

Prove me wrong.  Elect Bernie Sanders, get him in the White House.  Overturn the Senate, and Citizens United.  Break the banks, fix health care, unemployment, immigration and a fractured relationship with the world. This is all possible!

You just have to keep showing up.

Reading Sermon: The Green Mile

“I’m sorry for what I am.”

How many times have we ever uttered that phrase?  Not just sorry for an action, or inaction.  Having to feel the need to apologize for the crime of existence.  But Stephen King’s The Green Mile details the last days of John Coffey, a man who seemed to step into life just at the end of it.

Easter is here.  Today He dies for the sins of others.  The idea of a Messiah is one that is bandied about many times over in modern literature.  Superman is an obvious Messianic figure, coming down from the heavens to save us all.  Gandalf the Grey becoming Gandalf the White after descending into the depths of a hellish underworld.  But Gandalf and Superman have something that John Coffey never had: true love.

We imagine Jesus Christ as a beloved revolutionary in Roman times.  Riding into Jerusalem on a donkey whilst palms are laid before his feet.  Hosannas are sung in his name: “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”  The only despicable people that could ever disparage the Son of God are those leaders.  That den of vipers who only desired power and security, conspiring to kill our Savior.  This is a simple narrative, but it is not the entire case.

The people turned on Jesus of Nazareth.  Pontius Pilate gave the people the chance to save Him, and instead they saved Barabas, a convicted criminal who seems to exist simply to deny Christ a chance at earthly freedom.  All of Jerusalem was there to watch Christ stumble up to Golgotha.  He carried His own cross, bleeding from a crown of thorns as the crowd screamed his name.

Imagine that screaming.  Just a week ago it had been “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”  Now no one will defend him as he carries his own death up the hill.  Those who loved Him, those who would have followed this Savior anywhere He chose, would only take the care to make sure he was truly dead and gone.

John Coffey never had to deal with such love.  A man that stepped into the wrong place, he was a being of love and pain.  Cursed with an ability to take away pain and bring it into himself, Coffey saved by inflicting pain upon himself.  The miracles we can attribute to Coffey is healing a urinary infection, curing a malignant brain tumor, and even a mouse that had just been crushed to death.  His power seems to be limitless.  Unfortunately, Coffey could not save the Detterick girls.

King does distinguish in this point between the Messiah and Coffey.  The two Detterick girls had been killed for hours, and Coffey had been unable to cure such destruction.  Christ, however, had been able to raise Lazarus from death three days after the death.  He had been able to save Himself, rising again on the third day on what we now call Easter.  In this way we can more accurately describe John Coffey not as a Savior, or a Son of God, but as a healer, healing as Elijah or Peter in the name of God.  However unknowingly he does so.
Throughout The Green Mile, John Coffey has no idea where this power comes from.  “I fixed it, didn’t I, boss?”  In fact Paul Newcombe, the warden of the death row and the recipient of Coffey’s first recorded miracle, debates the Christian value of such a statement.  Coffey doesn’t describe the healing as the work of God or Christ.  Peter described his healings (Acts 3:8-16) as the work of Christ in the Book of Acts.  If Coffey were truly a servant of God, how then would he ascribe such power to himself?

To be frank, it is because Coffey is a simple man.  He cannot read, can barely write, cannot even tie his shoelaces.  John Coffey believes that this power comes from himself, stems from within, because he has no evidence to the contrary.  He is not a prophet, speaking the Word of God as he communes with Him.  Coffey is a man wandering the South, trying to live a life that is without pain.  A desire that goes unfulfilled.

Coffey most exemplifies a Christ-like figure in his death.  His warden and guards, who are the closest things to disciples to John Coffey, ask him what to do.  How can they kill this man, this beautiful Being of God, and not be damned forever?  Paul Newcombe believes himself to be as a Roman Centurion, has a vision of John Coffey spread on a cross as Newcombe condemns him to death.  And Newcombe does indeed kill him, but cannot understand why he has to do it.  Then Coffey lets him know that he wants to die.

Did Christ want to die, at the end?  Did He look out over a world that despised Him, and wish for himself?  Some peace, a final rest in His Father’s house?  We know that He asked for the “cup of suffering” to be taken from Him at Gethsemane (Luke 22:42-44).  Did God grant His wish?  Just as Coffey asks for rest, did Christ desire an end?  In this, we shall never know the answer.  We can never know the thoughts of God, or even those of a literary character as John Coffey.

What we can examine are two lives that were committed to the healing of a torn world.  Christ’s miracles resonate today, and His teachings form the foundation of a life that extends past morals and beyond life itself.  John Coffey exemplified a man who tried, despite all that was against him.  His race, his build, his idiocy, he still tried to do good.  In the end, they both were executed.  As Coffey states, “they kill each other with love.”

May we never have to experience such loss.  May we look to God Above and thank him for a life where love has extended us past any such pain, to glimpse His face in wonder.

Amen.

Random Poetry Drizzle: Speeding towards Peace

Please be done
Please please
Won't you do these
I need three
When are you free
Can you just help me stop.

I need to slow down.

But I can't
Things to do
Time's too few
It's not a rant
Or even banter
What to do
Do
Do
Do
Do

Finding what you need?

Creating.
Rushing towards something greater,
Enlightenment through English
Empowerment
Serenity.

What do you want?
A place, a peace.

There is a peace to be found
In creation, not just a frown
That hurts the soul
Make me whole
Make me something more.

More
More
No more.

Turn towards the center,
Keep turning
That yearning will never stop
For permanence,
For a place that will accept
These poor words.

I just need to accept the rightness of a wrong phrase.

silence.

Prayer for the Rhyming Artist

Knees bent to the floor,
My thoughts are straying toward the door
And of flight, and fright.
If my works will please forevermore.

Lord above, if You exist,
Please don't make my best rhymes this.
Let me find that greatest Art
Within You, and Your divine Spark.

That majestic word of Yours,that Grace
That flings itself to and fro through space
And time, it is an age.
The reason my hands stretch for the page.

My prayer? I pray for love
Love of mine that extends far above.
I pray for wisdom, I pray for a mind
To deal with those who drag me behind.

Small words and ink are all I can do.
Above all, may my work please You.

Random Poetry Drizzle: Ode to a Lonely Icicle

Hello there, little icicle,
How lovely do you sway,
My cheeks are frozen
But you were chosen
To melt my heart today.

Yes I am romantic,
Please! Stay awhile.
Won't let it go
Made it so
Frozen, my heart in your smile.

Is this the case? No.

You're cold, dank, damp
Hard, uncompromising,
Not tantalizing
Not tasty, melt too hastly
Little piece of a tiny cloud melt in the mind of a fantasizing
Writer's Cramp.

Faith Is Hard

I hate the word spiritual.

That's probably the wrong word to say.  Rather, I detest with every fiber of my being that degenerate word.  It is not an adjective, it is not a noun, or an adverb, and it cannot even begin to describe what it is aspiring to.  In fact, the only proper meaning for this word is that it gives a proper definition to those who choose to ascribe themselves to such weakness.

The spiritual person is not a person of faith.  They are a person "of all faiths," never being held down to one dogma or another.  They take freely from all, be it Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, even Wicca and Satanism at times.  Unfortunately, these spirituals have never studied the works of Paul, or the Torah.  They could not define what the Qur'an means to the nations of Islam, or the multitude of gods that reside within the hearts of Hindus.  There is no study, there is no deep reflection, in fact there is no true faith.

The spiritual person is one that does not offend.  He is not a person of faith, and does not wish to describe himself as atheist or agnostic.  Those are negative words, confrontational words, words that by definition are against religion.  The spiritual person is not up against religion.  The spiritual person merely wants to have nothing to do with it.

They do not see what religion means to an individual.  They see conflict, they see problems without solutions, a world blind that does not want to see.  But this is not what religion is.

Religion is pushing the mountains into the sea, the will of one joined by the force of millions. There is not a single voice, but a chorus of multitudes.  See how the mountains tremble at this force, and the very bones of the earth are shaken from their core.

Religion is the small voice in the corner of a diner, reading texts and asking how ink can cause the mind to reel in joy.  Watch that daughter, see her face as she reads.  Her face is tightened, inquisitive but not fully comprehending.  Then, a moment of clarity, followed by a brief instant of yet more confusion.  Then a dawning, and the eyes lift off the page, and are closed in contemplation.  She finishes her meal, walks out of the diner, and does not change.  There is no revelation, no deep truth revealed that day in a cold diner.  But she is closer.  Ever closer.

Faith is hard.  The mountains will not move alone, nor will the screaming hordes be silenced.  But stand in the storm, see the world through a new lens.  Watch it whirl without contest, and be moved.  Be moved to believe.

Random Poetry Drizzle: An Ode To Coffee

Sing, for the day has begun!
No, no no no I will not escape
This glorious trap of pillows and blankets.
I will be restrained
Til buzzing continues until I find release
And shout, angry at my freedom.

Sing for the day is dismal,
Gray and foreboding with promise.
Oh, joyous foreboding, go away
Until I hear a drip.
A drip.  A slosh, a slip.  That is all
I ask of this day.

Sing the song, embrace the ritual. The ritual of
cleansing.
Clean away the sacrifices of yesterday.
Today's ashen bones are ground, their scent already
Excites the mind with the promise of new life.

And O!  The liquid.  That ruddy muddy liquid
Pours forth from the gods.  In supplication
I hold my hand forward to drink
From the cup of Today, the cup of Awakening.

Sing the Song of Glory:
Ow!  Hot.  Black as tar.  More please.

- Jack Holder