Ash Wednesday 2025
Sometimes, the road ahead in life demands unraveling the truth — the reality that’s been hidden, distorted, obfuscated, and blurred by the people who have the most to lose from the truth coming out about them.
This sordid situation has been the State of the Union for nigh on a quarter of a century in America, perhaps longer, but I’m content with the notion that the turn of the 20th century was a sickening turn of the wheel toward deception and skullduggery where We the People are concerned with our Elected Representatives.
I saw this situation long before many other Americans, largely because I grew up in a household that was built on the very shaky ground of deceit. My every-day life as a child was one of trying to calibrate presented “reality” with the real thing.
The mental, and emotional, processes sharpened my reasoning skills and my logic, intuitive and deductive. That “skill set” has been used, constantly, over the past twenty five years. I wasn’t fully conscious of my analytic powers being put to work regarding the fraudulent façade of Government. I was, however, aware that my very early lessons in life were being applied on a global scale!
I recall a bar-b-que shindig that I hosted at my home in Newcastle, California, during the late summer of 1999. I’d invited, among a dozen or so other guests, my home-schooling resource teacher to the event. At that time, Mr. Hamrick was a recent acquaintance to me, but he was sharply observant of my moods. He perceived a certain downcast sensibility that I was undoubtedly trying to mask.
I was wise enough at the outset of my friendship with this kind, intelligent and nurturing man to drop the mask, and grant him the generosity of my honesty. I informed him that I was dealing with the death of my mother; and that inevitability had been complicated by the fact that ten years ago, I destroyed the Family Myth.
I’d not only destroyed the Myth; I blew it up so that it couldn’t be put back together again.
Mr. Hamrick looked at me in a way I’ll never forget. “That’s an extremely powerful thing that you did. They’re not exactly going to thank you for it.”
Understatement was always a talent of this scholarly and savvy man from Ithaca, New York.
I wasn’t thanked for my decisive and bold deed. I was hated. The cruelty of the hate mail from blood relatives that came to me was such a hurtful onslaught that I delegated the task of sorting through the deliveries to the P.O. Box to Dear Husband. It took me years before I could approach my own mail box without an inner flinching from a conditioned response to emotional pain.
We often think that speaking the truth should be rewarded, and, in the ideal world, it is. The more likely reality, however, is that the truth is a dangerous commodity. It’s viscerally feared by the people who are enemies to the truth. There are times when the truth must be guarded. And there are times when it must be revealed.
Knowing the time, and the rate, of revelation requires the touch of an artist, the discipline of a sage, the courage of a warrior, and the patience of a would-be saint.
The task of unraveling the truth is a mission of patience, persistence, faith, and — passion. Unless a person feels a passion for the truth, it’s all too easy to accept half-truths, which are also half-lies.
The unraveling of the truth concerning the horrific damages inflicted on My Country, Tis of Thee — this phase of our nation’s history is, I believe — unprecedented.
History, and God, shall judge the traitors of our nation.
I’m of the belief that there’s been an ongoing construction of an entirely new circle, with new rings, beyond the Eighth Circle of Frauds, called Malebolge, which is Italian for Evil Pockets, and American for Badlands.
This building project now reaches below that Ninth Circle, which is especially reserved for traitors, with different levels for those who betrayed their kin, their country, and their guests.
Even an immortal Classic Book can use an update.