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The Sherman—Outta Here!—Weather Report
Greetings, Y’All, if you remember me,
and Blessings, if you don’t.

    Hot and dry last summer, warm and dry in the fall, cold and dry in the winter, and 80 days in the spring without a drop.  The perennial grasses looked beat and weary, but we city people with running shoes and bicycles thronged the Open Space trails and their graceful curves under a blazing sky, brilliant blue or dulled by far-off fires. Our national forests were closed, and the temperature on June 17 was 103, humidity zero. Welcome to Albuquerque.

So what does “Outta Here!” mean?

Not dying.
Not leaving Albuquerque.
And not that I’m ending the Weather Report.
At least I don’t think so.



    The best laid plans of mice and men being what they are, one never knows. 
    Not to mention the sovereignty of God. 

    But I’m trying to restart the Report, 18 months after I ran out of steam in January 2021—Yes, that January 2021.  I still want to offer up some Politics and Religion for Family Gatherings, after 3 to 4 years on and off, changing providers, programs, mailing lists, proclivities. And presidents. Elections stir me up and chase me away. Proclivities? It seemed like the right word, though I had to look it up. Some have thought I could use some revamped proclivities, and I’ve had some serious reconsiderations.

    But a new reader may be asking, Who is this guy and why is he writing me? I can explain. These messages are in honor of my father, Wilbert A. “Bill” Sherman, 1917-2007. He emailed the family every Sunday afternoon and kept us updated on random happenings (the garden, Be-Be the cat) and the weather in Amarillo, about which he never complained. He never noticed the trees along I-40, all bent in from the south. I made a long-lasting joke of how “good” the weather in Amarillo is and argued that Albuquerque has the best weather, not just better than Amarillo, but the best anywhere. Since weather is the one thing you have in common with all your neighbors, and the only thing your loved ones far away don’t already know about you, it’s the go-to topic, when neighbors pass by, and when families gather around the table, or exchange distant messages—even in unsolicited letters to whomever. And we can all Agree. It needs to rain (or to stop!), we agree, on our dusty (muddy) paths where we walk our dogs.

    (I always have to apologize for writing about such tiny topics, when weather pours down devastation in so many times and places. Lord, have mercy on Kentucky, as I write. Albuquerque is a troubled little city, but for most of us its luminescent mountains and pearly skies—The clouds, His handiwork—keep us happy in our cozy neighborhoods, as long as we have jobs and pensions and solvent banks—and internet. It is a station, then, from which to scan the world and make sense, and send some good news.The same has been said of our nation, but with both the nation and the city the wolves are pacing at the gate.) 

    It did rain. June 18 the drought broke, and the temperature dropped 20 degrees. In 10 days we had showers and slow rains totaling 3.0 inches. Not much, most places, but a great relief here. The heat returned, but not for long, and midsummer has softened on and off with promises, 50% chance of rain, 30% chance of rain, 18%. (The promises shrink as their days grow nearer.)   Tonight, as I write, cool breezes wrap up a day of thunder and sprinkles—no rain for us, but here and there in the region heavy rain, damaged roads and dangerous ditches.
    And here and there in the world

It’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
[Robert Zimmerman, Nobel Laureate  A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall]

    Damaged roads and dangerous ditches. It’s a small thing, in a desert summer thunderstorm
(not always! It's eternity for a few!) but as a metaphor it’s serious. As I sit in the ease of a summer night, friends send links to video reports of almost every kind of trouble, complete with commentary.

Trouble, trouble, trouble, nothing but trouble. [RZ, Trouble]

Have you ever seen so much trouble?
And some of what we hope is good news turns out to be bad.

Look out your window, Baby, there’s a scene you’d like to catch.
The band is playing “Dixie,” a man got his hand outstretched. 
Could be the Führer, could be the local priest. 
You know sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.”[RZ, Man of Peace]

     Trouble, trouble, trouble; if all we have to do is figure out whom to blame, well, most of us are home free. Not Us! Them!
In case we need more details, I carry on a Christian-Conservative conversation, exploring the tensions of that persuasion in the secular and liberal world, and within itself, in its current variations and vacillations. This is where my proclivities will be stretched.
    The parenthetical subtitles will change, but this one, Outta Here!may set the theme for as long as I keep on tapping. It refers ultimately to the rapture, the New Testament concept that most of my believer-correspondents know well: Jesus returns to draw his followers up to heaven, (prior to the better-known Second Coming and establishment of His kingdom.) Others may draw a blank on this or know it distantly as extreme fundamentalism talk. I know for some recipients of this letter such religious notions hardly merit one’s attention.
    Those who know the rapture idea will differ on its details, but it means ending up with Jesus, far removed from the calamitous squabbles of the earth. So that’s where we are pointed, in this essay, and, hopefully in life. But that is a long way off. Rather than Out of Here, we’re looking at What’s Ahead. Or maybe, What on Earth is Going on? as various commentators on the news expostulate with regularity. Now, there’s a word I’ve never written, never used, until now, which I am surprised I suddenly knew. It’s not exactly right, because expostulation doesn’t just ask but corrects, complains. There are no expostulaters or expostulators in the English language, but there are plaintiffs, and they feel things should not be as they have been, and they wonder who is bringing about these undesirable results. And, pretty much, they know: That guy. And that guy’s supporters also know who is responsible for this mess (a different mess, as they see it): Those people. So we know what we know and have exactly zero wisdom.
    In the meantime, from my comfy little spot in New Mexico, I wonder if I still want to write about these matters—partisan U.S. politics, the Left and the Right, political correctness and being woke, residual systemic racism, Critical Race Theory, Black Lives Matter, January 6, 2021, the most secure election in U.S, history (they knew the outcome! secure = fixed.) But Maybe Not!
    Do I want to write about the Evangelical Church? Its sins and the accusations against it? The Emergent Church? The Pope, Nancy Pelosi, Hunter Biden, or Donald Trump? To be honest, a Christian intellectual itches to write about this stuff. I can almost drool in advance over the excellent books that will appear. But friends and family have said don’t argue, just pray. I held off a year and a half. I’m listening.
    But I am writing. I don’t want to be a quietist, eschewing all political action in favor of a faith that leans toward passivity. However, there is a case, naturally unpopular but central to my message, for trusting God and giving up on the world. This is what I have tried, these past 18 months, to get clear about. So much has gone wrong, from the Christian and conservative points of view, it seems we’d have to be out there fighting, in whatever ways we are gifted. But what are we really seeking?
    Let me go back. I’m a Christian? Yes, 53 years and forever, without a doubt. Conservative? Yes, but with reservations. I and my friends and most of the smart voices I gather from books and the internet have a certain smirk about us. Unlike the other side, we still have our sense of humor, but not yet enough humility. The other side has no concept of humility, while we Christian conservatives aspire to it but miss the mark. The way we mix gaily with the secular conservatives shows that our hearts are attached to a wrong kind of victory. I’ve felt that disparity for years, but lived with it for the sake of the superior thoughts and goals of the Right, insofar as we are talking about how to run a country and enjoy living together.
    More recently: Would I vote for Trump again? Sure, several times, now that I know how things work. :-)  He did a good  job with most of his job description. He did what 51% of Americans hoped he would do—which most of the rest need but take for granted. His successor does well only the small things that Trump left out, which are being politically correct and evasive.  I read recently that Trump came on as an angry man because Americans are angry. We’re sick of the BS and the rampant foolishness of politically correct policy. So we have an angry hero.
    But a friend and I came simultaneously to the same conclusion about ourselves. We wanted Trump to win in 2020 because we hoped for a few more years of American sanity: the usual freedoms, common sense, and prosperity within the bounds of merit and good fortune. We did not want to make America great again (leaving aside whether that term really applies), just to be spared destruction while we bless the world with some good ideas and the gospel. (And time to finish our lives on pleasant terms?) But we know the patriot vision is fading, a good vision, I believe—not criminal, as the Left says today—but limited, temporal, subject to abuse and hypocrisy. In any case, it is crashing. We don’t have to fix it, because God has bigger plans than the American dream.
     So some of my Christian friends are anti-activists. Just pray, trust in God’s sovereignty and marvel at the fulfillment of prophecy. Share the gospel. Okay, but I’m not quite sure: if injustice and fraud issue forth from the Washington establishment, but half the country thinks everything is normal, then half the country is stuck in a smug complacency, blaming the Republicans for most of what is wrong. Just keep them (him) out of power and we’ll  be okay. Sounds like some journalistic, educational, and electoral activism is needed.
     The effect of such effort would not be to put the good guys back in power, but to cast out the complacency, ferreting out the false assignments of blame and showing the driving force behind them. It could give historical and theological context to the warring movements of our world. And then individuals could consider where they stand, to whom they belong.
    My main point, which will take time to support, if that is even possible, is that there is no place to stand that is neutral and moderate. The world is split like never before, and the political labels are inadequate patches over the seething forces that lie beneath.

   That is why in 2016 I was saying to my liberal friends and relatives (or thinking about saying) that the Democrat party had become extreme, so they should step away (Numbers 16:21). My label for their progressivism is the “Man of Lawlessness.” Read about him in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2.

    For a long time the church has been worldly and the world has been churchy, but now the world is throwing off its churchy vestments in favor of a raw humanism that will not abide any restrictions, like limiting abortion or saying that a man is a man and a woman is a woman. That’s essentialism, and its robs me of my right to define my world!

At the same time the church (or that small part of it that perseveres) is letting go of its worldly impurities and getting serious about following Jesus, even on the Via Dolorosa. These two, then, the spirit of the world and the Holy Spirit in the genuine church, are mortal enemies to the end. This is why there is no neutral place to stand.
    Couldn’t you just ignore these issues and live your life, tend your garden, ride your bike? Well, go for it, for as long as it lasts. But trouble and danger are circling around. The crucial matter is in our conversations. We can talk about the weather for only so long. (And even weather turns political!) At some point you may be asked to weigh in on the danger of Donald Trump and MAGA, the scourge of Christian nationalism, America’s racist foundation, the oppressiveness of evangelical religion, the acceptability of every sexual preference, the injustice of the Israeli state. Even in a relativistic world, these questions all have their right answers. You can keep your neighbors happy if you answer them correctly. You can keep your job.

    Things may get worse. (In this essay? In the world?) I may try to convince you that in this splitting-headache world you will either be a Christian or you will hate the Christians—expelling them from decent society and the company of those who see the path to progress and the threat of inaction. This is pretty much what Hilary meant by “deplorables,” She may have used it inaccurately, because a deplorable condition or state of affairs causes regret and sorrow in the one who observes it, while Ms. Clinton has the mien of heartless rejection. Of course, I may be looking at the wrong photos.
    Maybe rejection is not yet necessary. You might be nice and opt for a genuinely liberal pluralism, defending the miscreants’ right to believe what they do. But that ground will soon vanish, making you an enemy of the state. The man of lawlessness has his own laws.

    Of course, if I were to predict any of this, it would sound like a pushy, paranoid, and puerile piece of reckless propaganda. So, there you have it: Christians teach that the world hates them, and if you hate that kind of thinking, well, there you have it.

    But I’ll hold off and not argue that point yet.

    Can any of the political issues mentioned above be argued profitably, or is this just a hopeless cat fight? Is there any logic to partisan politics? As a philosopher I like to circle around with abstract questions like this one, rather than go head to head on the actual questions. And I hope this abstract question can be answered yes: language itself binds all of us humans together in a bond of potential understanding and agreement. But our multiple world views are mostly at war.
     Here’s an area where reason might be able to get somewhere. I’m thinking about the common phrase, “conspiracy theorists” (CT). We use it to marginalize other points of view, attributing them to misguided influences that make up a collective deception, which posits incorrectly some dangerous force that we all ought to be resisting. For these conspiracy claims there is always much “supporting evidence.” Once a point of view is identified as the result of conspiracy theorizing, the assumption is that it could be explained away, if we took the time. But little effort goes into the disproof, because just to label it that way will dismiss it well enough.
     But suppose we try to judge whether or not a conspiracy-theorist label is justly applied. This is tricky, because we have beliefs about beliefs about beliefs. We  are judging (forming beliefs about) the critics’ beliefs that some groups’ beliefs are nothing more than make-believe. That group identifies a conspiracy, and critics call them conspiracy theorists, and we want to know if the critics are right, in which case the belief in question can be dismissed. Roswell aficionados believe the powers that be are hiding the appearance of aliens, and we call that a conspiracy theory, so we dismiss it. Let’s say in this case the proof is fairly easy. I learned today that the “alien” interpretation of the Roswell event came several decades after the event, brought to life by a book. Before that, the crashed whatever was well known as a simple case of government double-talk and obfuscation.
    Of course, if you want to believe in it, you can; by default, you can think, Okay,Whatever, and Why Not? I see that I have rested in a noncommittal agnosticism regarding Roswell, but to get the facts and judge the case would be more responsible.
    So what happens if we get the facts and judge the case with a few of our current public squabbles?
    This can be your homework.

  Which of these is more readily dismissed by any clear-thinking and rightly guided person?

The Washington, Democrat establishment and its media cohorts effectively stole the election for Biden by cheating at the polls and by unfair news coverage of Trump and the Biden family, including hiding critical news events and manipulating social media outcomes.

The Covid-19 pandemic was caused deliberately by corrupt officials doing “research” but really intending to destabilize the world and move power further from the people and into the hands of the global elite that is taking over. And treatment of the pandemic was ineffective and harmful because of corruption in the pharmaceutical and medical establishments.

    If you are a clear-thinking and rightly guided person, please let me know which of these conspiracy theories you think is more easily debunked. Or weigh in on whether either one should be dismissed that way. Until next time...

    Late in August, the gentle, comfy summer is slipping away. I went to bed after a day of cool clouds, under a flood alert, expecting cold, wet thunder to fall upon us by dawn. I awoke to a slight and silent rain, which continued all day. The major rain event in the desert southwest seems to have fizzled (drizzled) here at our little lookout. This has been the nicest summer imaginable. However, Texas, Arizona, and Utah know better. Sylvia and I often pray for mercy for everyone, right or left, who needs mercy.

The sun is coming up behind the mountain, casting a red-sky-at-morning doubt about the safety of being a fair-weather friend of God and agreeable to everyone.

Blessings, 
Jerry at Richstone Messages
August 24, 2022  (September 15)
[email protected]

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THE SHERMAN RED-SKY-AT-MORNING WEATHER REPORT

Sunday Morning October 25, 2020

Something familiar about that date . . . wasn’t that the day that God created the world, in 4004 bc? I shouldn’t be flippant, but we humans can look funny at times. All glory to our God who did create this universe for us to enjoy Him in! But flippancy abounds for good reason: I googled the question but got “Did you mean: what was Bishop Hunter’s date for the creation of the world” And the correction was just to add the apostrophe, because I had entered “Bishop Hunters,” because the oral transcription memory machine didn’t know about Bishop Ussher. Nor did I know how to spell his name. But even if I had typed it in correctly or incorrectly, the little brain in the virtual keyboard would probably have switched to Hunter, a baseball player. It changes my entries to names I never knew, or capitalizes words that apparently were the name of some obscure band somewhere in the all too recent past (in that little bit of popular history in which American youth knows its way.)

But the creation date was October 23. That’s the day we voted. Fittingly, the next day we drained the swamp, and today in a little while we go to the Caribou house to drain the swamp. Those of you in humid climes may not know about evaporative coolers. Swamp coolers. Professionals are trying to talk people here into using big motors to compress and decompress freon, giving up on these messy but comfortable and economical coolers. They work. My fiberglass model at San Pablo is 40 years old and doing well. Letting it drain a little whenever the pump is running (over the side of the house in a hose to the base of the plum tree) keeps it remarkably clean. Otherwise they become the Dead Sea.

So Sylvia started out with Stella at 7, daylight time out-living its welcome, in a warm 57 degrees, due to cloud cover, which we have not seen for 45 days. A rosy band lay across the mountain, didn’t last, yielded to a comfy cloudy day, to do the cooler and bring in all the tomatoes.

We worked hard all day and saw a little blue sky in the west, and then the sun came out

just to say goodbye. Not red.

Orange. A few drops fell.

Sailors take warning.

The Weather Report goes back a few years, but I am cutting it off, Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward for what lies ahead.

August 24, 2022

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