Pilgrimage 2025 Norwich England

On the train to Norwich from London

Holding Down the Fort

Another Saturday in St. Augustine,

another protest march pushing back on

. . . EVERYTHING!

Signs and flags run the gamut from "No Kings" to "Hands Off": Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, University Students, and to support Ukraine and those deported illegally to El Salvador.

What strikes me is not so much those who turn out each Saturday, but those who quite literally on the other side of the street leisurely stroll, shop, and eat ice cream while the world as we know it is on fire! Two worlds!

We have our work cut out for us, and that means everyone is called upon now to add their signs and voices to the cry to stop what is going on in the United States of America at the hands of our government.

Not a day goes by that another long-held legal right doesn't slip between our fingers. These drastic changes in health care, in education, in safety nets are irrevocable for those of us living in such a time as this and will be irretrievable for generations to come, if ever again.

There is room for everyone on the grounds of the Castillo de San Marcos, a fort built because England was expanding her empire, and Spain needed to stop them*.That very fort where those of us gather, 330 years later, know just as they did then that Freedom is not a given, but must be fought for over and over again.

Freedom is meant for all of us, not just some of us. The time is now for one and all to hold down the fort together in solidarity. The time is now to stop the unthinkable aftermath that will not be the best of two worlds, but the worst case for way too many of us.

Photo courtesy of Jane Watts taken in Hyannis, Massachusetts

*https://www.nps.gov/casa/learn/historyculture/who-built-the-castillo.htm

Cognitive Dissidents

This "New Hypocritical Version"* written on plain brown cardboard, mimicking the everyday street person's sign, speaks for that silent majority among us.

Stepping back from the growing crowd of dissidents gathering in the public square, a bigger picture can and should be seen:

Tariff "wars" are a constant distraction from true tragedies happening in our country daily, like two children dead from measles in the USA in 2025, and two-hundred young men grabbed without question and incarcerated in a foreign gulag forever. They were stripped, literally and figuratively of human rights, and those children of their future lives.

Breaking News: Another tariff twist and turn.

In the meantime, and this is a very "mean" time, one student after another in our land's highest educational enclaves are being nabbed from campus by masked men and women, then imprisoned down South for saying what they think at a "think-tank". While others remaining on campus live in fear that they may be next , or that their financial aid will be cancelled in the middle of their degree programs.

Breaking News: Stock market plummeting and rising as tariffs pivot from country to country.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of American civil servants were fired, just when longtime safety nets, like social security, and food stamps, designed specifically for whenever regular paychecks disappear, are about to be "disappeared". Some of these faithful people have found themselves at food banks for the first time, only to find empty shelves.

Breaking News: On second or third thought, tariffs are paused for 90 days. Stay tuned!

Today's tragedies are tomorrow's losses, and those losses are mounting by the day while every magic trick in the playbook is performed to fool everyone. Let's not be fooled into believing what we know in our hearts to be the truth. Let's not wait for someone else to speak up. Being brave when one is afraid is the meaning of the word courage from the French word "corage" which comes from the Latin, "cor", heart.

Take heart, for these days are not only a matter of the head, not a cognitive exercise, but a proverbial "love thy neighbor" from your heart moment. One does not have to follow a faith tradition to follow one's own heart.

"When did we see You hungry and nourished You? . . . When did we see You a stranger? . . When did we see You ill, or in prison and visited You? . . . "

Breaking News: . . . as you did it to one of the least, you did it to Me".

*(Matthew 25:37 - 40 )