1/16/2022

MDFP, JRB,

            It looks like you are having a snowy Sunday! I hope it blankets the neighborhood in beauty & then melts before rush hour.

            Please stay away from the newspapers this morning. They include several articles like, “This Isn’t the Presidency Biden Imagined for Himself (NYT)”,  “Biden experiences the limits of his office — and the fragility of his presidency (WP)” & “Joe Biden’s low point: can the president revive his sinking popularity? (G).” As my husband would say, “don’t get your panties in a knot,” & just remember that this too shall pass. Just focus on MLK, Jr’s observation about the length of the arc of the moral universe. 

I keep that in mind as I think of the fate of the Myanmar people who are being attacked by their own military. I heard today that the junta is pressing the wives of their soldiers into service which shows how desperate they are for personnel. Please continue to champion HR 5497, BURMA Act so we can hasten the demise of the Tatmadaw.

At our Yangon Friends Meeting we were joined a woman today who called herself a “sojourner,” but it is unclear that she is following a “leading” that she is compelled to share with Quakers all over the country. She has no home of her own & I’m afraid she is a lost soul. I worry that we have more & more such people in our midst.

As you ponder your 1st year as POTUS, I hope you will keep in mind what MLK, Jr said in his last speech in Memphis. “the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding — something is happening in our world.”

            I think that’s true now, too. So, continue to BYBS & evoke Bayard Rustin’s reminder: “What God requires of us is that we not stop trying.”