I spent the afternoon with my friend Adnan, and took the above photo of him with the beautiful winged heart wall ornament that my friend Kate gifted me with when we visited northern Wisconsin this past summer.
Following is what author Toby Johnson says about the winged heart, symbol for the mystical path of the Sufi.
The symbol of the Sufis is a winged heart. Sufism is not a way of the head but of the heart. The way to fly to God is to open the heart, to be human and to love and offer life in service to God and to others. The primary mystical teaching of Sufism is contained in the Sufi interpretation of the Islamic credo La Ilaha El Allah Hu. What most Muslims interpret as a declaration of monotheism, “There is no God but Allah,” the Sufis understand as a revelation of ultimate unity: “There is no reality but God.” To remind themselves of the implications of this, Sufis sometimes greet one another with Ya Azim: “How wonderfully God manifests to me through you.”
In the October 10 issue of In These Times, Miles Kampf-Lassin has a piece titled “The Warning Signs for Kamala Harris’s Campaign Are Flashing Red.”
When this article was reprinted on the Common Dreams platform, it was re-titled “Kamala Harris Must Correct Course Before She Blows This Election” . . . something many of us have been saying for some time now.
Following is an excerpt from Kampf-Lassin’s article.
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Trump is a uniquely flawed candidate and his dismal record in office is easy to excoriate, as Harris demonstrated during the September debate. His presidency showered the rich with tax cuts, squeezed working people, offshored jobs, terrorized immigrant communities and failed to respond to a pandemic that led to mass preventable death and turned the economy upside down. The Supreme Court justices he appointed have curtailed reproductive rights and targeted the entire regulatory apparatus. And the far Right’s Project 2025 playbook promises to roll back decades of progressive reforms, from voting access to LGBTQ rights.
What’s more, Trump has promised a regime of vengeance that would directly target journalists, organizers and anyone considered a political enemy.
Still, Harris has not yet rebuilt the fragile coalition that pushed Biden over the finish line four years ago. Compared with Biden in 2020, polls show Harris underperforming with voters of color, younger voters and seniors – all key for Democrats. And when it comes to lower-income voters and those with less formal education, Harris is being outrun.
A second Trump term would mean economic mayhem for the working class and a disaster for the labor movement. Yet, according to CNN political analyst Harry Enten, “Trump has more working-class support than any GOP presidential candidate in a generation,” while Harris is poised to have the worst Democratic performance among union voters in decades.
Among Arab American voters, support for Harris has cratered as the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza continues, with Israel expanding its assault into Lebanon. A mid-September poll from the Arab American Institute (AAI) shows that, among likely Arab American voters, Trump leads Harris 46% to 42%, a far cry from 2020, when Biden won nearly 60% support. Many of these voters say the war on Gaza is a top priority – and they could be won over with a change in policy.
In Michigan, home to a significant Arab American population including Palestinian and Lebanese families, internal polling shows Harris is “underwater,” according to Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.). Based on publicly released polls, the state is a toss-up at best. The Uncommitted National Movement, which drew more than 100,000 voters in the Michigan Democratic primary, has refused to endorse Harris due to her continued support of “unconditional weapons” for Israel’s campaign of annihilation. (Hillary Clinton lost Michigan by around 10,000 votes in 2016; Biden won it by 150,000.)
These underlying dynamics should ring alarm bells for a Democratic campaign entering the final stretch of a cardinal race with potentially catastrophic consequences. If Democrats take the authoritarian threat posed by Trump as seriously as they profess, they need to change course in order to cobble together a cross-section of voters who can vault Harris into the Oval Office.
That change should start with promising a shift away from unflinching sponsorship of Israel’s military offensives. Seven in 10 likely voters want to see a ceasefire in Gaza, which will require forcing the hand of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including by conditioning arms in line with international and U.S. law. Polling from AAI suggests that backing these restrictions would make 56% of Arab American voters more likely to support Harris.
. . . [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has proven time and again he is unwilling to reach peace; Harris can promise to use U.S. leverage to make him. This move, backed by a majority of Americans, would help make inroads among a vast stratum of voters — including those in Michigan, Wisconsin and other swing states – eager to support the Democratic nominee if the party would simply stop underwriting a genocide. It’s also the morally correct position – tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children have already been slaughtered by American weapons, and the Netanyahu government appears dead set on not just continuing but expanding its onslaught.
On the economy, Harris could depart from her recent approach of cozying-up with crypto financiers and wealthy business interests by instead leaning into the populist, class-war rhetoric and policy planks Democratic voters have responded to in the post-Obama era. Harris has embraced good policies like reviving the expanded child tax credit, building millions of new housing units, continuing to invest in green manufacturing and going after price-gouging companies. But with a majority of the population living paycheck to paycheck, working-class Americans are in desperate need of a bold redistributive agenda that would materially improve their lives right now. Targeting the elites and billionaires is an effective strategy to win over lower income voters, and while Harris has adopted appeals in this direction to acknowledge economic grievances, there’s more runway left to address them.
Harris can take a big swing by doing more to champion the pro-working class policies her party nominally supports—in speeches, ads and voter appeals. Harris could make central in her campaign the extremely popular positions already in the 2024 Democratic Party platform – such as a federal $15 minimum wage; extending Medicare to cover hearing, dental and vision; capping out-of-pocket drug costs while forcing the pharmaceutical industry to lower prices; expanding Social Security; limiting rent increases by corporate landlords; and passing the PRO Act to massively grow union membership.
. . . These progressive realignments by Harris would also help vitalize the get-out-the-vote operations that were pivotal to Biden’s victory four years ago when young voters helped clinch swing states by coming out in droves. This year, youth voter registration is lagging behind 2020, and top Democratic groups are privately fretting that the lack of meaningful outreach to young people of color could cost them the election. In focus groups, younger voters cite concerns about the economy as well as the assault on Gaza as motivating factors in their decision. Compelling them to not just vote but also knock doors, travel to swing states and make calls should be a top priority.
To read Miles Kampf-Lassin’s article in its entirety, click here.
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To close, here’s a related segment from Sabrina Salvati’s October 2 Sabby Sabs podcast. In this segment Salvati examines how Kamala Harris has already lost the Muslim and Arab-American vote and is losing working class voters as well as other demographics.
In the course of this examination, Salvati highlights the panic of the Democratic establishment and its media lackeys to the Green Party presidential candidacy of Jill Stein and her rising support with Muslim voters in key swing states, including Michigan (left).
The Democratic Party has lost the working class because the Democratic Party decided to win over Goldman Sachs, Wall Street, the Ivy League-educated crowd. That’s what they wanted, that’s what they got. How do you let the Republican Party bet you with the working class? This is how sad the Democratic Party has fallen. That’s not Jill Stein’s fault. That’s the Democratic Party’s fault. Rather [than Stein] it’s NAFTA, it’s crushing the railway workers’ strike. Remember, the Teamsters didn’t support either [corporate-backed] party this year.
“This administration has financed a genocide in Gaza for the last year and every day you’re up there denying it,” Cosgrove told Miller before declaring, “People are sick of the bullshit in here, it is a genocide.”
In examining Cosgrove’s confrontation with Miller, Cabello highlights Peter Beinart’s recent appearance on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show The Reidout. Beinart is a political analyst and the author of the forthcoming book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. In this segment, Beinart strongly critiques the role of mainstream corporate media and its various personalities in covering the Israeli government’s response to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. And he makes these strong critiques on corporate media and to one of its personalities! It’s quite something. . . . As is Cabello’s segment in general, although I realize his style of presentation may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
What Hamas did on October 7 was evil in that it targeted civilians in a really horrifying way. But if you want to fight against that violence, you can’t do it effectively unless you understand that it’s within a larger structure of the violence of oppression. . . . [I]f you believe that all human life is precious, you have to believe that Palestinian life is precious too. Even strategically, if you don’t understand the context in which the October 7 attack happened, if you can’t distinguish between understanding and justifying, which are completely different things, you’re not going to have an effective strategy. And that’s [also] what happened after 9/11. We didn’t have a good strategy for dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan because we didn’t do the right analysis about why in fact those attacks happened.
. . . Good for Kamala Harris for [recently] showing genuine empathy and talking about Palestinians as human beings. But people are not going to take you seriously in that rhetoric if you keep unconditionally providing weapons – the same weapons that are killing people in Gaza and killing people in Lebanon. If these words are going to mean anything, they have to be followed by actions.
To mark yesterday’s feast of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, I share today an excerpt from Kittredge Cherry’s informative piece entitled “Sergius and Bacchus: Paired Male Saints Loved Each Other in Ancient Roman Army.”
I also share the portrait of Sergius at right and the portrait of Bacchusbelow, both of which are by artist Nicolo’ Mazzucato.
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Saints Sergius and Bacchus were third-century Roman soldiers, Christian martyrs and men who loved each other. . . . They are by far the best documented, most widely worshiped and most influential male paired saints in Christian history. They are some of the earliest Christian martyrs. The close bond between Sergius and Bacchus has been emphasized since the earliest accounts, and recent scholarship has revealed their homosexuality. The oldest record of their martyrdom describes them as erastai (Greek for “lovers”). Scholars believe that they may have been united in the rite of adelphopoiesis (brother-making), a kind of early Christian same-sex marriage. Their names were often included in these rites of same-sex union, along with other saintly male pairs. Some see them as patron saints of same-sex couples. But their devotion to each other has inspired people of every sexual orientation over the centuries.
From ancient times until today these “gay saints” have inspired some of the most beautiful art depicting the holiness of same-sex couples, sometimes in a homoerotic way. A classic example of paired saints, Sergius and Bacchus were high-ranking young officers in the Roman army. Sergius was primicerius (commander) and Bacchus was secundarius (subaltern officer). They were tortured to death around 303 in present-day Syria after they refused to attend sacrifices to Zeus, thus revealing their secret Christianity.
Yale history professor John Boswell names Sergius and Bacchus as one of the three primary pairs of same-sex lovers in the early church in his 1995 book Same Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe. (The others are Polyeuct and Nearchus and Felicity and Perpetua.) Paired military saints were popular in the Middle Ages [and] Sergius and Bacchus were the most famous and one of the earliest couples. . . . An appendix in the book includes Boswell’s translation of “The Passion of Sts. Serge and Bacchus” from the original Greek text dated 373-395. It was the first time that an ancient hagiography of Sergius and Bacchus was ever translated into English.
Today LGBTQ Christians in the west can get status from their religion but may hide their sexual orientation to avoid condemnation. However Sergius and Bacchus faced the opposite dilemma. In the Roman army homosexuality was accepted and perhaps even encouraged, but Christianity was taboo.
To read Kittredge Cherry's article in its entirety (and view a number or artistic depictions of Sergius and Baccchus), click here.
As a supporter of the presidential campaign of Jill Stein of the Green Party, I received the following message earlier today.
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One Year of War and Genocide,
Generations of Oppression
Michael,
Today, October 7th, 2024, marks one year since the Hamas attack on Israel that many consider to have sparked Israel’s US-backed genocidal campaign against Gaza that is now exploding into a regional war. But history did not begin on October 7th, 2023.
To understand the current situation, we must look back at least as far as 1948 to the Nakba, the brutal mass expulsion of indigenous Palestinians from their homes by Zionist paramilitaries and the newly formed state of Israel. While the world has been watching in horror for the past year as this genocidal rampage has cut short hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, that one year was preceded by generations of violence, occupation, displacement, dispossession, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.
While we abhor violence, we must understand that settler colonialism, occupation, genocide, and all forms of oppression have always provoked resistance. If we merely condemned violence “on all sides” without first acknowledging the underlying conditions of oppression and doing everything we can to rectify those conditions, we would not only fail to address the root causes of the problem, but would risk becoming complicit in injustice by drawing a false equivalency between oppressor and oppressed. As Desmond Tutu observed, “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
One of history’s greatest nonviolent changemakers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., identified the “great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom” as “the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice” and “who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” For too long, the U.S. government has supported Israel’s version of “order” and “peace” that demands the systematic subjugation of Palestinians to violent injustice. But whenever people are denied their human rights, resistance is inevitable. Even President Kennedy recognized this with his statement that “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
Dr. King also recognized the hypocrisy and uselessness of condemning the violence of the oppressed without first addressing the violence of oppression: “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.” The U.S. government is fully complicit in the violence that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians and others, after supplying Israel with over one hundred fifty billion dollars in military aid and shielding Israel from accountability to the international community for its long history of defying international law. For Americans to condemn Palestinian resistance while our own government actively oppresses the Palestinian people would be neither just nor conducive to peace.
The events of October 7th, 2023 have been weaponized to justify the genocide of Palestinians. Yet it has become clear that official accounts of October 7th have not only been divorced from the historical context, but factually distorted to serve the agenda of the Zionist Israeli government. As one example, Australia’s ABC Newsreported in September that Israeli forces apparently applied the “Hannibal Directive” on October 7th, killing an untold number of their own citizens in attempts to prevent them from being taken hostage. The official discourse on hostages has also been extremely one-sided, rarely if ever mentioning that thousands of Palestinians are held prisoner by Israel without charge. From the “Hannibal Directive” killings to Netanyahu’s disregard for the families of Israeli hostages to Israel’s expansion of the war far beyond Gaza, it’s clear that the Israeli government has not acted out of concern for hostages, but has only used those concerns as justification to launch a preconceived agenda of conquest and genocide.
In just the last few weeks, the situation has gotten even worse. In a massive escalation of its genocidal war on Gaza, Israel has invaded Lebanon. Shortly thereafter, Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Tel Aviv in response to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, and Iran itself, raising fears of an ever-expanding war in the Middle East that could even spark World War III, nuclear war, or both.
If he wanted to, President Biden could stop this war with one phone call to the Israeli prime minister as Ronald Reagan did in 1982. Israel’s war machine is completely dependent on US taxpayer-supplied weapons, money, military and diplomatic support. But instead the Biden-Harris administration is complicit in Netanyahu’s plans to expand this horrific war. A recent Politico article titled “U.S. officials quietly backed Israel’s push against Hezbollah” revealed that top Biden advisors actually encouraged Israel to invade Lebanon – despite the Democrats’ claims that Kamala Harris is “working tirelessly for a ceasefire.”
We do not consent to be dragged into World War III by Netanyahu to support his genocidal land grab in Palestine, Lebanon, and beyond. By allowing Netanyahu to essentially dictate US foreign policy, Biden and Harris have abdicated the responsibility of their office.
As President, the first thing I will do is make the phone call to stop this madness at once and fix the crisis at its source – by ceasing all support to Israel until it ends its genocide in Gaza and agrees to negotiate a settlement for Palestine and the region consistent with international law and the rulings of the International Court of Justice. The U.S., as the primary backer of Netanyahu’s military campaigns, holds the power to end his assault on Gaza and bring him to account. This is not a matter of diplomacy but of the U.S. electorate exercising its responsibility by voting for leaders with the political will to act. As voters in the most powerful nation on Earth, we bear a unique obligation to hold our government and its allies accountable.
By holding Israel accountable, the U.S. can rejoin the international community, from which we have become increasingly isolated due to our government’s unconditional support for Israel’s defiance of international law. When the United Nations considered membership for Palestine this year, 143 nations voted in favor and only 9 against, including the U.S. and Israel. But the U.S. has consistently used its veto power to shield Israel from accountability, undermining any credibility our nation has to speak on issues of international law and human rights.
As a Jew who grew up just after the Holocaust, with relatives who fled pogroms and a grandfather named Israel, I take “never again” seriously. And that means never again for anyone. In just the last year, I have met thousands of people from all walks of life, including Muslims, Jews, Christians, Palestinians, Israelis, Arabs, and many others from many ethnic, religious and spiritual backgrounds. And I can say with certainty from my personal experience that peace and friendship are possible. We can put an end to war, genocide, and generations of oppression, and start a new path to a world of peace, justice, and human rights for all.
Unfathomably, it’s been a year since a horrific Hamas assault set off a more horrific Israeli genocide in which an insatiable, unraveling Zionist project has slaughtered, burned, starved, maimed and broken hundreds of thousands, mostly women and children, in the ungodly name of vengeance. A year of blood, terror, protests, rulings, another self-immolation, ceaseless dead babies, doctors, teachers, poets. Yet still, “The word ‘ceasefire’ is a wish, a dream.” And in Gaza, “Every day, we live in hell.”
The official death toll in Gaza is now almost 42,000; doctors who have volunteered there say the true toll is at least 118,908, or almost triple that. There are over 97,000 wounded, and most of Gaza’s two million people are homeless. Given the ongoing violence, the tens of thousands missing, the unprecedented humanitarian crisis – famine looming, illness spreading, meager food, water, medical care – those obscene numbers will likely continue to soar. Meanwhile, Israel’s unhinged genocidal campaign has failed to achieve its mythical “total victory” over Hamas while successively obliterating one red line of “civilized” warfare after another – bombing schools, hospitals, mosques, shelters, using starvation as a weapon, killing hundreds of civilians to rescue four captives, targeting journalists and doctors, and so heedlessly, relentlessly bombing residential areas that entire families, babies to grandparents, have been wiped out. Still, complicit Western allies, mostly us, send killing weapons and look away.
The result: “A year of war against children that has made Palestine the most precarious place in the world to be a child.” Duly sacrificed on the altar of Israeli impunity are over 16,700 children killed, including newborns; at least 30,000 wounded, some as young as two with multiple limbs amputated; and many thousands of already disabled children seeing their fragile worlds implode: “They destroyed what was inside us.” In an angry letter to Biden urging, “End this madness now!,” ninety-nine U.S. doctors who worked in Gaza describe healthy newborns dying of malnutrition, the “first time I held a baby’s brain in my hand – the first of many,” children regularly shot in the head or chest despite international rules deeming them innocents, and, in their dreams, the cries and screams of maimed children and grieving mothers “our consciences will not let us forget. . . . Their mutilated bodies are a monument to cruelty.”
. . . And now Lebanon, where Israel burrows ever deeper into another quagmire without end or strategy, another place of dust, screams, sirens, rubble, bodies in pieces, nowhere to go. “We are all the same,” writes Mohammed Mhawish of “a solidarity beyond words.”
“For the people of Lebanon,” continues Mhawish, “Gaza is not a distant cause; it is a mirror of their own suffering, a continuation of the story we’ve been living for decades. We know the bombs killing their children are the same ones killing ours.”
On the mournful one-year marker, that sense of oneness prompted tens of thousands worldwide to protest, and fight to end, the ongoing genocide. In the U.S., the focus was rightly on our persistent, unconscionable, American-taxpayer-funded arming of Israel despite its routinely revealed war crimes, and irregardless of Biden Administration claims it’s been “working tirelessly” on a ceasefire. Critics: “That is not a thing.” The brutal, bottom-line truth: Without U.S. arms, funds and diplomatic cover, “This genocide would not have been possible.”
If our only goal is to love, there is no such thing as failure. Francis of Assisi succeeded in living in a single-hearted way, in which his only goal was to love. This intense eagerness to love made his whole life an astonishing victory for the human and divine spirit and showed how they work so beautifully together.
That eagerness to love is the core and foundation of Francis’ spiritual genius. He encountered a love that just kept opening to him, and then he passed on the same by “opening and opening” to the increasingly larger world around him. He willingly fell into the “bright abyss,” as poet Christian Wiman calls it, where all weighing and counting are unnecessary and even burdensome.
After his conversion, Francis lived the rest of his life in an entirely different economy – the nonsensical economy of grace, where two plus two equals a hundred and deficits are somehow an advantage. Such transformation of the soul, both in the inflowing and in the outflowing, is the experiential heart of the gospel for Francis. He then brought the mystery of the cross to its universal application, for he learned that both the receiving of love and the letting go of it for others are always a very real dying to our present state. Whenever we choose to love we will – and must – die to who we were before we loved. So, we often hold back. Our former self is taken from us by the object of our love. We only realize this is what’s happened after the letting go, or we would probably always be afraid to love.
. . . In the Franciscan reading of the gospel, there’s no reason to be religious or to love God except in recognizing “The love of [God] who loved us greatly is greatly to be loved,” as Francis said. Religion is not about heroic willpower or winning or being right. This has been a counterfeit for holiness in much of Christian history. True growth in holiness is a growth in willingness to be loved and to love.
– Richard Rohr Excerpted from “Opening to Love”
Center for Action and Contemplation
September 29, 2024
Image: Detail of a mural by Dimitri Kadiev. Writes Richard Rohr: “This mural art on the outside of the Center for Action and Contemplation represents Francis’ love and acceptance of life in its varied and diverse manifestations.”
I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed's original by-line read, “Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.” As you can see, it reads differently now. This is because my journey has, in many ways, taken me beyond, or perhaps better still, deeper into the realities that the words “progressive,” “gay,” and “Catholic” seek to describe.
Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe is often considered the voice of a soul pining for God or a lost love.
On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.
"I believe your blog to be of utmost importance for all people regardless of their orientation. . . . Thank you for your blog and the care and dedication that you give in bringing the TRUTH to everyone."– William
"Michael, if there is ever a moment in your day or in your life when you feel low and despondent and wonder whether what you are doing is anything worthwhile, think of this: thanks to your writing on the internet, a young man miles away is now willing to embrace life completely and use his talents and passions unashamedly to celebrate God and his creation. Any success I face in the future and any lives I touch would have been made possible thanks to you and your honesty and wisdom."– AB
"Since I discovered your blog I have felt so much more encouraged and inspired knowing that I'm not the only gay guy in the Catholic Church trying to balance my Faith and my sexuality. Continue being a beacon of hope and a guide to the future within our Church!"– Phillip
"Your posts about Catholic issues are always informative and well researched, and I especially appreciate your photography and the personal posts about your own experience. I'm very glad I found your blog and that I've had the chance to get to know you."– Crystal
"Thank you for taking the time to create this fantastic blog. It is so inspiring!"– George
"I cannot claim to be an expert on Catholic blogs, but from what I've seen, The Wild Reed ranks among the very best."– Kevin
"Reading your blog leaves me with the consolation of knowing that the words Catholic, gay and progressive are not mutually exclusive.."– Patrick
"I grieve for the Roman institution’s betrayal of God’s invitation to change. I fear that somewhere in the midst of this denial is a great sin that rests on the shoulders of those who lead and those who passively follow. But knowing that there are voices, voices of the prophets out there gives me hope. Please keep up the good work."– Peter
"I ran across your blog the other day looking for something else. I stopped to look at it and then bookmarked it because you have written some excellent articles that I want to read. I find your writing to be insightful and interesting and I'm looking forward to reading more of it. Keep up the good work. We really, really need sane people with a voice these days."– Jane Gael
"Michael, your site is like water in the desert."– Jayden
