Temporary(?) Insanity

I’ve got a million things going on in my head this morning, none of them good. In a life full of ebbs and flows, insanity is flowing like a river at the moment. Seriously people, sometimes when I read the news I think I am a spectator at a theatre of the absurd. I look at headline after headline with slack-jawed confusion and embarrassment. How can any of this be happening? 

Of course, its not like this every day…thank God. Most days I’m busy tending my own garden. Most days my thoughts are occupied by plans for the future, friends, and family. But when the pace of life momentarily slows I have time to catch up on the world outside my small slice of it—and I have to say—the world has gone mad.

There isn’t even any one thing I can point to that illustrates the point. Its not one thing, its a Cobb salad full of things great and small that bring me to the conclusion that mankind has lost any connection to reality. Either that or insanity is the new reality. Since I don’t want to believe that, I’m going with the reassuring modifier, temporary insanity.

This morning I was confronted with two stark and honestly terrifying photographs. Were they of mutilated bodies in the Middle East? The agonized screaming faces of refugees from the God forsaken Gaza Strip? No. I was spared that catastrophe. But these two catastrophes were bad enough…

I was introduced to the bi-vocational mayor of a small town in Alabama whose other job was pastor of the local Baptist Church. She/He made the news when they shot their self in the head after their double life as a cross-dresser with an appetite for trans porn was outed on a blog. My mind is simply unable to wrap itself around something like this. Later on in my news skimming I encountered this actual headline:

Author comes out as trans MAN after spouse comes out as trans WOMAN

Again, I have no frame of reference for this despite 65 years of education, training and experience. Therefore I don’t know how to respond in any meaningful way. So I sit here dumbfounded. Gobsmacked. Perplexed beyond understanding.

Then there’s the second picture. I am told that oddsmakers in Vegas tell us that this is the most likely matchup in 2024’s presidential election despite the fact that overwhelmingly it is by far the most dreaded by the American people. Now, I know that what I am about to say is probably over the top and certainly the most reductionist reaction possible. But, people…if this happens, if these two men are once again thrust upon us in an election, we are finished as a nation. 

On the plus side, Patrick, Sarah and this guy…



…will be arriving this Thursday for a two week visit! They will be working from home while mixing in lots of side trips around our beautiful state culminating in being with us for Thanksgiving. So excited!!