The Portland Frog and John Prine - more ramblings

What do John Prine and the Portland Frog have in common?

I don't know. I'm listening to John Prine and watching videos of the Portland Frog and other brave cartoon blow ups harassing Noem and Trump's ICE masked desperadoes. 

I was brought up to respect authority. Don't talk back to your parents, don't disrupt a teacher, decision makers looked out for our best interests, preachers helped the down trodden (is that term even used now?). I wasn't encouraged to question whether those people/institutions deserved my respect. I learned that later.

I still struggle with my early indoctrination of acceptance to authority. I know what I believe, but there is a voice that remembers having the TV show All In The Family turned off because it was questioning the meaning of the American flag. Questioning authority was not allowed.

What changed? Leaving my comfort zone. First, away to college. Not following in the footsteps of those ahead of me. To the farthest place I could so I could continue my education academically and personally. I had to stay in state, so UE it was. From NE Indiana, to SW Indiana. On the banks of the Wabash, to the banks of the Ohio river. 

After graduating, moving to Colorado where I discovered not only the beauty and magic of mountains, but my ability to question what I had been taught, and learned that thoughtful meditation was important part of my evolution.

So what does this have to do with the Portland Frog and John Prine? 

The Frog is more obvious. He symbolizes the fight against repressive suppression of alternative ideas. We need the Frog to show the ridiculousness of armed and masked puppets here to stop a none existing threat. 

John Prine? I was listening to his song "When I Get to Heaven". It does not describe the heaven I was taught about in Sunday School or Sunday morning sermons. It challenges that each individual has their own view of heaven. 

My heaven includes people of all beliefs who showed their love for others rather than excluding them because of who they love, how the defined themself, whether they were "legal", who they worshiped. My heaven includes Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Native Americans murdered for the land we live on, Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was murdered by fascists for his faith in God, and others who may not have worshiped the God I grew up with but who have shown the Christian, Muslim, Bahia, Hindu, etc. love towards others that their prophets preached about.