New Mexico Jewish Link Spring 2018
The Independent — Gallup, N.M.  4/7/18

What We Must Do
By Diane Joy Schmidt
             Politics and religion are on a collision course. What makes us human, our free will and our innate sense of right and wrong are in danger.  So we have to talk about politics and religion in the same space here. We have a man in the White House doing everything in his power to weaken and destabilize the country, and we have a party running this country, sitting there with their legs crossed, not raising a peep.
            What is our response, as individuals? Many of us have a natural distrust of politics, of movements, of joining a group, so we sit quietly watching the gathering dust storm blind our sensibilities: the daily assaults on our health and human services, our educational system, our water, our environmental protections,  our veterans affairs, our press, our infrastructure, our democracy.
We sit in the night, uncertain what to do, conscious that things are not right, hoping it will all go away and we will wake up in the morning and it will all be gone, only to awake to renewed insanities—the latest news this week, mobilizing the National Guard to whip up hysteria about an imaginary threat of hordes attacking our borders. Another news item, a plan to spray 60 million acres with dicamba, the latest pesticide, to kill the increasingly resistant superbugs created by the adaption of insects to pesticides, that are attacking fields of genetically modified cotton and soybeans. A failing spiral, not unlike the overuse of antibiotics. And even worse, the spraying is in the direct path of the migrating monarch butterflies and is projected to destroy the milkweed that is their only food. More fracking, mining of uranium, pollution of waters, abuse of farm animals, abuse of ourselves and others.
We have become callous to robots conducting drone strikes in faraway places. In denial, we escape into mindless entertainments. Once we have lost our souls, we won’t care anymore about turning ourselves over to the care of machines, handing our children over to be raised by artificial intelligences. Eventually most of us simply won’t be needed anymore.
Or, we might wake up and do the right things. Be stewards of the earth. Get out the vote. Keep open the lines of communications with our neighbors, with whom we might otherwise disagree. Put aside petty differences and find common ground. Light a candle in the darkness. Comfort the fearful. Respond to the needs of others.                       Maybe it is our art that is needed, or the birdseed we put out, or the bottle or can we put in the recycling bin, or the fallen sparrow we save. Every act of kindness is another piece of gold tipping the scales of justice in the right direction.

Diane Joy Schmidt is a writer and photographer who was raised in the traditions of Reform Judaism and is an admirer of all things spiritually resonant.