Dragon Fruit Cactus – Rosaliene’s Succulent Garden – September 27, 2025
Five weeks have passed since I last attempted to share my dilemma in adjusting to a new social-political environment. The assaults on our daily lives and livelihood, especially on black- and brown-skinned working-class people, have been relentless and vicious. The issue I had originally planned to address quickly lost importance with yet another issue demanding attention. This constant flogging by a vindictive patriarch is designed to overwhelm and traumatize us into a state of stupor.
I am currently reading Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues by Kavita Das (USA, 2022), a native New Yorker teacher, writer, and speaker. In Chapter 7: Ripple Effects of Making Waves, she raised the debate about moral clarity in journalism. At the time (August 2021), American journalists were “raising concerns about the recent tendency by journalism outlets to publish writing that is morally reprehensible under the misguided assumption that this is necessary in order to appear balanced by providing multiple perspectives on an issue” (p. 237).
Rosaliene’s Garden Summer 2025 – Sons’ Garden Plot 2 – Los Angeles – California
I give thanks that, this summer, temperatures in West Los Angeles did not rise into the upper nineties (Fahrenheit) and more. While I enjoy the privilege of staying indoors during the hottest parts of the day, there were times I had to brave the heat for medical visits. On August 19th, I also began weekly sessions of physical therapy for what my young new doctor determined, after X-rays of my knees and ankles, is osteoarthritis. Thankfully, on my return trip home around 11:15 a.m. after my physical therapy session, I can take refuge from the heat under a tree near to the bus stop. What’s more, I stay hydrated with coconut water.
After a year of suffering with intense pain in my heels after an hour’s walk, I now know the cause and I’m getting help to strengthen the muscles in my hips, glutes, and thighs. Except for a setback after doing 30 repetitions of squats during my third session—now reduced to ten—I’m making progress. Last weekend, for the first time in a long while, I did not have to limp indoors with aching feet after just two hours of gardening.
Front Cover The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future by Robert P. Jones (USA, 2023) Photo Credit: Simon & Schuster
Every US state contains similar legacies of white racial violence because every US state was built on the same foundation, anchored by the Doctrine of Discovery: the conviction that America was divinely ordained to be a new promised land for European Christians. In each of the thirteen original colonies and in eight additional slave states, this deep founding myth justified the enslavement and exploitation of Africans in pursuit of white flourishing. In all, it justified the killing and dispossession of Native Americans and the claiming of their lands by good white Christian people, who alone possessed the virtues necessary for sustaining “civilization.”
[…]
The Christian Doctrine of Discovery continues to cast a long shadow across America. After more than five centuries, we collectively continue to refuse to answer, once and for all, the fundamental question: Is America a divinely ordained promised land for European Christians, or is America a pluralistic democracy? The coexistence of these contradictory traditions has created fractures in our nation’s foundation that weaken the integrity of our laws, our culture, and our politics…
Excerpts from The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future by Robert P. Jones, published by Simon & Schuster, New York, USA, 2023, pp. 258 & 311.
The Doctrine of Discovery, 1493
The Papal Bull “Inter Caetera,” issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493, played a central role in the Spanish conquest of the New World. The document supported Spain’s strategy to ensure its exclusive right to the lands discovered by Columbus the previous year. It established a demarcation line one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands and assigned Spain the exclusive right to acquire territorial possessions and to trade in all lands west of that line. All others were forbidden to approach the lands west of the line without special license from the rulers of Spain. This effectively gave Spain a monopoly on the lands in the New World.
The Bull stated that any land not inhabited by Christians was available to be “discovered,” claimed, and exploited by Christian rulers and declared that “the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself.” This “Doctrine of Discovery” became the basis of all European claims in the Americas as well as the foundation for the United States’ western expansion. In the US Supreme Court in the 1823 case Johnson v. McIntosh, Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in the unanimous decision held “that the principle of discovery gave European nations an absolute right to New World lands.” In essence, American Indians had only a right of occupancy, which could be abolished.
Robert P. Jones, PhD is the president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and a leading scholar and commentator on religion and politics. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future (USA, 2023), as well as White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which won a 2021 American Book Award. He is also the author of The End of White Christian America, which won the 2019 Grawemeyer Award in Religion.
Jones writes a column on politics, culture, and religion for The Atlantic, Time, Religion News Service, and other media outlets. He is frequently featured in major national media, such as CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others. He holds a PhD in religion from Emory University and an MDiv from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Rosaliene’s Garden – Spring 2025 – Sons’ Adjacent Apartment
During the warmer and drier spring days, I was finally able to return to my weekend gardening activities. Our garden remains a source of joy and a refuge. With ongoing raids in our Latino communities across Los Angeles County and beyond, it has become clear that one’s legal status offers no protection from being randomly grabbed and disappeared. No criminal record; no problem. They fabricate one: resisting arrest, assaulting an officer. It’s a numbers game: a 3000-a-day quota. Now, I’m wary about going for my scheduled yearly blood and urine tests next month. You see, my medical clinic also serves our Latino and homeless communities.
During the time I spend with our plants, I forget this crazy world I now live in. They respond to my presence, my touch, and my voice. (Yes. I talk to the plants. 😊) They care not about the color of my skin or country of origin. My neighbor’s cat, Pumpkin, couldn’t care less, either. She loves to spend time with me while I’m gardening. At the request of blogger and cat lover, Rebecca Bud at Rebecca’s Reading Room, I’m sharing the photos below of Pumpkin.
As a resident of Southern California, I’ve yet to come face-to-face with one of those terrifying tornadoes I’ve seen in movies. Tornadoes don’t occur often in our state. Whenever they do occur, they are weak, ranked EF-0 in the Enhanced Fujita Scale, causing little damage. The reality of being pummeled by a violent tornado is a devastating, life-changing, traumatic experience. Such was the case for people living in Joplin, Missouri, on May 22, 2011, featured in the Netflix Documentary The Twister: Caught in the Storm, released on March 19, 2025.
The tornado that struck Joplin in 2011 was rated EF-5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, with maximum winds over 200 mph (320 kph). Ranked seventh among the top ten deadliest tornadoes in United States history, it is the deadliest so far in the 21st century.
With a population of more than 50,000 and a population density near 1,500 people per square mile, Joplin suffered extensive damage amounting to US$2.8 billion. According to the account recorded in President Obama White House Archives, the tornado first touched down in the southern part of the city at 5:41 p.m. local time. During the following 32 minutes, it headed eastward across the city, demolishing everything in its path for 13 miles (21 kilometers) and extending as much as a mile (1.6 kilometers) wide at its widest extent.
I know… I share your pain. I’m also scared. These are dangerous times for immigrants in America—scapegoats for the social and economic ills of our nation. Our trade partners, too, have come under attack. It’s now tit-for-tat for unfair trade practices. “Liberation Day” on April 2nd has unleashed import tariffs/taxes, ranging from 10 percent to 54 percent, for all countries that sell goods to the United States. What a high-risk economic strategy! But this is just the latest drastic change assaulting us daily since January 20, 2025.
Regardless of our political views or ideology, we the people will have to deal with the negative or unexpected consequences of dismantling our government agencies and picking a fight with our closest allies since the end of World War II. Judging from these developments, it seems that the globalized capitalist economic system is under stress. And so it should be. For how much longer can we sustain an economic model of continual growth and profits that is pushing our planetary life systems to their limits?
Non-human life faces extinction and more frequent, extreme weather events are disrupting and threatening human life. The minority billionaire ruling class (MBRC) believes that environmental and other deregulations are the answer to renewed economic growth. Their insatiable greed blinds them to all the warning signs of economic and societal collapse. Instead, they now grasp at AI, an energy guzzler, to preserve their way of life.
Flowering Aloe Saponaria (Soap Aloe) – Los Angeles – California – March 2025
While a two-headed monster is creating havoc, anxiety, and pain across the land of the living, Mother Earth signals that life finds a way in the face of adversity. The captioned photo features the explosion of orange flowers from the succulent Aloe Saponaria (Soap Aloe) in my neighbor’s garden on March 3rd. The photo below is a closeup of the early blooms captured on February 22nd.
Closeup of Flowering Aloe Saponaria (Soap Aloe) on February 22, 2025
In another adjacent garden plot, the potted white azalea plant defied last year’s extreme summer temperatures that scorched its foliage. During a dry winter, my concern grew for its survival. Just three days of continuous light rainfall in early February were enough to give it new life again. What a joy!
Map of North America and Greenland Source Credit: World Atlas
The [United Nations] Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfil in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
During 2024, thousands of our American brothers and sisters lost loved ones, property, and jobs to various weather/climate-related disasters that struck their state. Many of them are still recovering from their losses. Without resources, others will never recover. Tragedy does not impact us all in the same way.
On January 10, 2025, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released the data and analysis quantifying the economic costs of the disasters that reached or exceeded US$1 billion. They confirmed 27 weather/climate disaster events, amounting to a total ofUS$182.7 billion. This places 2024 as the fourth costliest on record, trailing behind 2017 (US$395.9 billion), 2025 (US$268.5 billion), and 2022 (US$183.6 billion).
Front Cover: Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America by Russell Moore Photo Credit: Penguin Random House (USA, 2023)
Increasingly, in this sort of American culture, it is not just that we are divided about what we value about the way things should be, but what we are allowed to say about the way things actually are. Now, notice, what I wrote here is not what we see about the way things are, but what we are allowed to say. This is because we live in a time in which “truth” is seen as a means to tribal belonging, rather than a reality that exists outside of us…. Our passions and experiences and intuitions often warp the way we see things, especially the most important things, which is why we need grace. People are going to have—from now till the Apocalypse—arguments about what is true and what is false, what is real and what is fake. Our problem now, though, is that, increasingly, we are called not just to argue about what is true, but to say things that we know to be false, just to prove that we are part of the tribe to which we belong.
Excerpt from Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America by Russell Moore, Penguin Random House LLC, USA, 2023 (p. 69).
Note: This excerpt is taken from “Chapter Two: Losing Our Authority” in which Russell Moore addresses the radicalization of many evangelicals, following the controversies regarding the global COVID-19 pandemic and the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
Russell Mooreis an evangelical Christian theologian and ordained minister. He is Editor in Chief of Christianity Today and previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (2013-2021). Prior to that role, Moore served as provost and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he also taught theology and ethics.
Three Worlds One Vision 
