Well, Hello Again Everyone,

What it means to be living in Houston is still pretty new to me.  Certain things seem different while certain things seem quite familiar.  I am still surprised to see certain things while other things pass by without much recognition.  Each day, Houston gets a little more commonplace to me.

One thing that is more and more commonplace is systemic cruelty.  I have taken a particular interest in the Lina Hidalgo news story.  Judge Hidalgo is a Latina immigrant in her mid 30’s.  After serving in a very important, elected role for six years, she came down with clinical depression and decided it would be in everyone’s best interest if she were to to step away from her role to seek treatment.  That’s when the cruelty really began.  Lawsuits, accusations and just a fairly constant stream of what appeared to me to be intentionally kicking her while she was down. 

I found myself wondering if the same cruelty would have been so socially acceptable had she been:  white, male, maybe a little older, dealing with cancer rather than depression.  I certainly don’t know, but I can also pretty easily see a way clear to thinking that maybe things might have been different.

I found myself thinking that cruelty is inherent to politics which have strayed so far from governance that they are nearly entirely two different things these days.  But then, I started to wonder why that is.  Why is it that cruelty seems to be built into the political system and so many other systems; financial and legal to name just a couple?  Why did we do that?   Is it just as simple as a manifestation of the truth of our souls?

As a new Houstonian, this case caught my interest.  Maybe it didn’t even hit your radar, I don’t know.  I’m not going to wax on about maybe one day the cruelty will go away and we can all live in some sort of perfect world because that would be boring and we all know that’s not going to happen.  I just wish we could find a way to distribute our cruelty more evenly rather than focusing it on people who look, think or maybe even just talk differently than we do.

Respectfully,

Rev Ed