Activism and Culture

http://www.zazzle.com/what_would_republican_jesus_do_t_shirt-235139558636661966

The above link frustrates, irks, and irritates me. I am so tired of the politicalization of religion. Separation of church and state was meant to protect the church. As so many politicians try to bring religion into the process of political races and decisions, the US population is beginning to treat religion with disdain and irreverence.

Jesus was not a democrat.

Jesus was not a Republican.

Jesus didn’t really give much of a rat’s behind about what “political party” was elected to the religious council of his day. Instead, he pointed out governing individuals for their hypocrisy and attempted to solve the social problems that were left behind by their inability to rule.

So if you want to solve social problems than be like Jesus and get out there and do something. Become involved politically, but don’t bring religion into it. Don’t be one of those people who stands up in church and says God told you who to vote for. He may very well have, but I don’t think he told you who I should vote for.

Maybe God just wanted to election to be a little closer.

And PLEASE don’t buy a T-shirt. If you suddenly find your upper body naked, there are some shirts here that I think Republicans, Democrats, and Jesus would all agree serve an important fundraising cause.

http://secure.invisiblechildren.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?screen=PLST&Store_Code=IC

In my opinion, they’re also not too ugly. Oh, and while you’re shopping online, maybe think for a minute that you don’t need yet another t-shirt crowding your already stuffed closet and that maybe that money would be put to better use in someone’s donation bin or to buy some cleaning supplies and clean your roommate’s half of the house, some candy to give to those kids who never get any kind of treats that you always see at the park, or adopt to adopt a cat from the animal shelter.

What Would Jesus Do?

I first noticed this exciting truth with cats. We had a lot of cats, and they pooped all of the time. I am not kidding. When I got pregnant, my husband was scooping the litter box like a crazy person! I just didn’t understand why these cats had to poop so much–until I looked at what I was feeding them. The cat food I got from the store was filled with filler, not meat and vegetables. I started buying wholistic cat food and the cats stopped pooping. Hallelujah!

Soon, though, I realized the same mantra was true about me. If I eat crap, buy crap, or do crap, then the result is…CRAP! It seems such an easy rule, but we all just need to avoid crap, whether that’s onion rings and pop or opening our mouths when we could have just as easily remained quite.

 Cathedral–Crosby, Stills, and Nash
Six o’ clock
In the morning I feel pretty good
So I dropped into the luxury of the Lords
Fighting dragons and crossing swords
With the people against the hordes who came to conquer

[Ending (Strings and Piano)]

I’ve looked on ruins. I’ve been in hundreds-of-years-old churches. I have had many thoughts similar to these.

“All religion has to have its day.”

Recently, I watched a documentary about radical Islam, a documentary that established the concept of Jihad, or holy war, and portions of programs from Al-Jazeera in which children not yet three years old were being taught that Americans were of Satan and should be killed in the most violent ways. The documentary also called out to moderate Muslims, encouraging them to raise their voices against this travesty.

A few weeks ago, I was walking down the street just after the Gay Pride Parade in Chicago when I saw a group of very nicely dressed men in blue shorts, tennis shoes, and tucked-in shirts. In the midst of the other more vibrant costumes that seemed to characterize the crowd, these guys stood out. I saw that the flag they were carrying read, “a church for us!” Why have Christians so alienated this group so that they do not feel they could attend any church ?

“Too many people have died in the name of Christ…”

Too many people have died in the name of religion because we allow ourselves to become brainwashed. Religion doesn’t tell us to kill; religion tells us to love. Religion calls for peace, not for war.

And yet we humanize heaven and create monsters.

Barbara Eherenreich’s Nickel and Dimed was one of my favorite books, not that it was anything like Chicken Soup for the Soul. In fact, the book is one that made me feel most guilty for being an American. On not getting by in America was certainly right. The book was filled with stories of those who tried to make ends meet but never could, those who weren’t in poverty because of their choices, but those for whom choices had never been available–not when they were growing up, not when they were adults, not even when they started families.

Now that I’m reading the same author’s Bait and Switch about white collar unemployment, I’m beginning to see her larger point. While the author writes the sad stories about those who can’t seem to get or hold a job, she also uncovers the seriousness of work in the United States. For most U.S. residents, work defines us. It is our reason; it is our purpose; it is what we do all day and what we think about when we get home.

Is this how it was supposed to be?

A long time ago, everyone was a farmer, and farmers and their families worked together in the land all day and then came home and were together in the evening. Even after everyone stopped working as a farmer, people worked at menial jobs less than eight hours a day and got off to their real life when the bell sounded.

Work was never supposed to be the end. Of course, we need workers so that goods and services can be provided, but when people concentrate wholly and work and not enough on their own lives and the things about which they are passionate, we cease to be humans and are left as mere androids.

This is why I chose the self-employment route. I don’t even feel like I do work, but it certainly isn’t want clouds my mind each day.

I posted my thoughts yesterday about the Fourth of July, so today I’d just like to leave you all with this:

Find the cost of freedom

buried in the ground.

Mother earth will swallow you.

Lay your body down.

- Crosby, Stills, and Nash

Tomorrow when we march in or go to Fourth of July parades, when we down cheese sticks and elephant ears and we light sparklers and ooh and ahh at fireworks, we’re celebrating our freedom to do these things.

Of course, this sounds cliche, and in a manner of speaking it is, but because we can often get so wrapped up in our own ideas and causes, I think we need to remember that no matter how immoral, unfair, or hardline the other guy’s policy is, we have a duty to respect and honor his right to believe it.

So tomorrow, when you see the other side in the parade, when a noisy guy who is your polar opposite is screaming at the top of his lings, and when your opponent is campaigning on the same side of the parade, remember it’s freedom that lets this happen.

In 1974, Graham Nash of the harmonic trio Crosby, Stills, and Nash (sometimes a quartet with Young) released “Prison Song,” an upbeat political folk melody about drug sentences.  Although the song primarily has to do with those sentenced to long periods of time for Marijuana-related crimes under mandatory minimums, one stanza struck a particular chord–and it wasn’t middle C:

“There’s not a rich man there

who couldn’t pay his way

and buy the freedom that’s

a high price for the poor.”

Not only is this song still a soulful blend of folk, rock, and country music, but also it is still relevant, only for something much more serious than extensive pot sentences–death.

I know I wrote about the death penalty yesterday, but it continues to haunt me. When I was a kid, I used to be terrified of going to jail, even though I never did anything illegal. With ten year sentences for pot smoking and possession, children sentenced to life in prison because they happened to be in the same car as a criminal when he robbed a convenience store and shot the clerk, and over 3,000 American citizens, residents, and guests on death row (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=188), I guess my fear is legitimate.

Along with being afraid of going to prison when I was a kid, I had a similar fear and disgust in regards to the death penalty. While others watched movies where criminals were executed by beheading with a sort of distasteful enjoyment, I always shuddered at the images. In middle school, I read a book called Princess that detailed the life and hardship of a Middle Eastern woman who also happened to be part of the royal line. In part of the book, the woman described how female offenders were often punished with drowning in the family pool. That’s still an image that I can’t get out of my mind.

But this is America. That wouldn’t happen, right?

Wrong. We may not be drowning our daughters in pools for their sexuality yet, but we’re getting close. Innocent people sit on death row for years pleading their innocence to all ears who can hear only to be silenced again and again until they are finally released with no education and no way to get by in the world years too late.

Others are sentenced to death under the “law of parties” or “felony murder rule,” which allows the death penalty even for those who did not kill someone else.

It isn’t drowning in a pool, but it’s close. It’s taking away a life that we did not give.

But this is the United States, the land of the free, and the place where you can still be tried, arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death while innocent.

Even for those who are not innocent, the death penalty seems barbaric and outdated, similar to whipping, the stocks, or water torture.

And yet the United States, supposedly the richest, most civilized nation in the world, allows this.

I welcome comments and discussions on this topic.

I am a member of the Campaign to End The Death Penalty, Chicago Chapter. Recently, I wrote a prisoner with the object of providing him some access to the outside world. I’ve always been mortified by the extent to which prisons are crowded, people are sentenced, and others are executed in the United States.

My husband says the death penalty is necessary. He has a whole shelf full of these books about why rehabilitation programs, for some inmates, don’t work. He always tells the story of a certain senator who allowed a furlow program, letting a several-times-convicted violent criminal leave on a weekend pass.  That criminal ended up murdering several people. He says, this is why the death penalty and life imprisonment are necessary.

I agree that there are some people who won’t ever change. I believe that everyone, though, as the ability and capacity to change. When the government takes away a life it didn’t give, the government is not taking into account that ability to change.

But the death penalty isn’t the only grievance. In 2007, Frontline issued a documentary called “When Kids Get Life.” The documentary follows five inmates who have no hope of parole and who were put in U.S. jails when they were just children. Their crimes included the murder of a sexually abusive stepfather, being in a car during a robbery that resulted in a murder, and having knowledge of a murder.

In the United States right now about 2,000 people are sitting in jail cells who were convicted as children and have no hope of ever getting out.

Imagine all the things you want to do with your life when you’re 18, 25, 33, 57, 62, and 89.

I think, in this country, it is legitimate to be afraid, even if you are a law-abiding citizen that some day something will go terribly wrong. In a world of freedom, why can’t we fix these laws concerning imprisonment?

When my husband and I lived in our last apartment, a couple of rooms that looked like had been stuck to the front of the house with drywall and clay, we had a thermostat that boasted “the comfort zone.” Now, because we had no insulation in the winter and no air conditioning in the summer, we rarely felt comfort, even in “the comfort zone,” but the idea made us laugh. It would have been great if we could have just turned the the dial to “the comfort zone” and we would have been happy–no homework, no debt, a clean house.

Anyway, the liberal jargon is “comfortable,” now, isn’t it? It used to be tolerant, but then we all realized how crappy we would feel if someone came up to us and said, “hey, I’m tolerant of you.” My response to that probably would be, “well I’m not tolerant of you,” and I’d probably use my Taekwondo skills in a less than defensive manner. The fact is, we don’t want to be tolerated. We want to be liked, but I think most of us are OK with it if someone doesn’t like us. We’re not so OK with it if someone isn’t comfortable around us.

“I’m just not comfortable with…”

I’ve used that phrase plenty of times. Here are some recent examples:

I’m not comfortable with lending you my car because I might go into labor and have no way to get to the hospital.

I’m not comfortable with this position because I feel like I am at risk both physically and financially.

I’m not comfortable signing a check and then letting someone else fill in the amount because fraud could occur.

In each of these situations, the phrase “I’m not comfortable” really meant I don’t trust. I don’t trust that my due date is still weeks away; I don’t trust that I will not over-extend myself in this job; I don’t trust that someone will use my signed check appropriately.

For this reason, we can’t just be tolerant and uncomfortable. We can’t say, “I’m tolerant with your lifestyle, but I’m just not comfortable…”

This means, “I know I have to say I tolerate you, but I don’t trust you.”  We don’t have to agree with all kinds of lifestyles, but we do have to be more than be tolerant. We need to be comfortable.

This weekend, I went to Chicago’s Gay Pride celebration. I’m not homosexual, nor do I know a great many homosexual people, but I’ve always prided myself on being tolerant. This weekend, though, I learned the importance of being comfortable. Though I may not have been comfortable at first–primarily because of the large crowds–I learned to become comfortable very quickly. I learned to trust.

I entered The Comfort Zone.

For the last two days, I’ve taken a much needed break. I didn’t write any more than I absolutely had to, and I spent some time browsing through the library.

Why Guys Don’t Want To Go To Church–strolling down the positive thinking and activism isle I ran into this one.

I go to church. Sunday, Wednesday, whenever I can and whenever I don’t have a conflict, I try to make it in the door. I like our pastor. He’s down to earth, witty, and intelligent. I like many of the people there. I believe generally what is taught, but there’s still something about church that makes me force myself to go, something that makes guys, like my husband, not want to go to church.

Considering this for a moment, I think it might be apathy. I think back to the image of Esmerelda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame by a man named Victor Hugo who liked his wine a little bit more than he liked God. Esmerelda runs into a church seeking sanctuary.

Across the world, I feel like people are still seeking sanctuary in churches today, and the churches are turning a blind ear, a blind eye, and tuning them out with some new Christian pop music and a fresh Christian romance novel. Many of the people you find in evangelical Christians are conservatives, and they’re not quite about that fact. They’re pretty quick to stand up in the middle of sharing time and announce why their candidate for office is the best; they’re pretty quick to “pray for you” if you’re supporting the other side. I’ve had many conversations with other middle-of-the-road churchgoers who say they really feel persecuted on Sunday mornings. It’s sad.

What’s sadder is what’s not being done at churches. What’s sadder is the fact that we get in all of these arguments about politics, but we don’t do anything about it. Conservatives argue that the government should not have a hand in so many social issues; liberals argue that someone needs to help, and the church could be a common ground where those who claim to love others really love others by giving sanctuary. After school programs, industrialization in underdeveloped nations, ending poverty.

Sanctuary. It could be a turning point.