Mud

In another month or so, when the ground thaws, there will be lots of mud, and the Minnesota mud rooms will be fulfilling  their purpose. This thought came to me a day or so ago, somewhat secondarily to another thought about mud.  If only all the muddy thinking apparent in current political polemics could be contained in a mud room!  


The worst, for me, is the way separation of church and state gets all mixed up.  And when power seeking individuals display such mendacity, cowardice and hypocrisy, well, I wonder how we can be spared their vitriol.  Sure, I can switch them off at will, but they continue to make headlines.  Pure hearts are proudly worn on sleeves and  foul moths spew muddy waters of bigotry and incivility.  Hence, muddy and tangled logic defies containment and  keeps getting tracked beyond the mud room and into the house. 


Usually what repels us is also something ugly within ourselves that we do not recognize. So I suppose I ought to be careful here.  But I think it is safe to say that critical thinking skills can serve us well these days.  If we have them, we need to hone them! If we lack them, we need to get them! It just isn't enough to quote learned scholars and saints of the past, or our country's Founding Fathers, or The Constitution , or the Bible or the Qu'ran.  The proof is in the pudding, really.  


Integrity, courage, compassion, truthfulness, generosity, intelligence, and holiness can be discerned any number of ways and so can foolish ambition and false religiosity.  Spirituality is always more than skin deep, but inevitably surfaces in quite tangible ways that even the most ordinary alert person can recognize.  But first we must scrape off, or wash off, the mud - and leave it in the mud room. Only then can we distinguish the universal freedoms at risk in our democratic society, the responsibilities we have as persons, as citizens, and  the disadvantages of a pseudo-theocracy where the idol always has clay feet.