¿What's God Got to Do With It?

 I know I haven't been posting much about this year's contest for POTUS lately, but as most of you know I'm in the tank, as they say, for Obama. There's really not much I can say without the risk of sounding like a little schoolgirl who just made it onto the cheerleading team. That's not to say I'm not perturbed by some of the goings-on during our most recent attempt at picking the Face & Voice of Our nation. Take religion. Really, take religion. I'm not using it. Seriously though, I've seen some frightening things going on in our country where religion is involved. I'm talking about now, not the good old days where people died daily for their beliefs. Wait. That's still happening. I meant the good old days when untold numbers of our fellow human beings were brutalized for their faith. It still astounds me some of the foul things done in the name of a deity. I hesitate to even bring this up. Religion's one of those things you're not supposed to discuss as the discussion usually breaks down to a pissing contest about who is "closer" to God. However, certain things about this campaign have gotten caught in my craw so deep that I fear I risk a stroke if I don't get them out. Besides, it might be nice to hear from a recovering Christian who's evolved into agnosticism (my version of agnosticism: in short, I believe in something but don't give it a face or a name, nor do I make up a personality, nor do I believe It consciously controls Us.) Nevertheless, I apologize in advance if anything I say offends anyone. The muslim thing bothers me. Not that so many people actually believe Obama’s a muslim, but that if he were, that it would make a difference. How can a country that was founded on the guiding principle of Freedom—Freedom of religion above all else—allow itself to care whether any candidate is a muslim or not. I'm ashamed. I don't behoove anyone their right to worship as they like, as long as they respect my right of doing likewise. However, If anyone out their genuinely believes they couldn't vote for someone because they don't pray to the right god, then that individual vehemently opposes what America stands for. I was a devout, if meandering christian until I was 17 or so. At one time or another I've attended church with Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses and Baptists. I was less than a year away from my mission when I escaped the Mormons. I've also worshiped at a couple of synagogues, have been to my fair share of Passover Seders and have even been present at some Wiccan rituals. My father-in-law is muslim. And I haven't even mentioned the Santeria rituals I've personally performed (and I won't mention more since that's a topic I'll be tackling in my second novel, Chango Crying). A result of my religious travails was my ultimate decision that choosing any specific religion was tantamount to damning a good deal of my Friends & Family to some kind of painful afterlife they didn't deserve. That was one of the reasons I had chosen mormonism in my teens. They always seemed to have the answer for every question, and as a precocious fourteen year-old, I had lots of questions. When I questioned the idea that only by faith in God through Jesus could one earn the much vaunted paradisical afterlife, the mormon missionary drew a star in his little book of potential converts and proceeded to let me in on the ritual known as Baptism for the Dead. Everybody would have the option of getting to heaven if they simply accepted this ritual initiation posthumously. It is a beautiful ritual that I’ve had the honor of participating in on a few occasions, but I'm a sucker for rituals. I even cried at the hours long Good Friday Procession that paraded through the streets of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico during last spring break. When personal problems with the mormon church led to little action besides continual pronouncements that while the members were not perfect, the religion itself was, I took it upon myself to see it as a challenge to prove or disprove the veracity of that statement. It didn't take long for me to discover that the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints did not allow blacks full membership until 1978. I heard plenty of excuses, from the idea that black folk just were not ready until then to bear the full responsibilities of mormonism to doctrine stating that blacks of African descent were descended from Cain therefore blacks were unworthy of "full" worship. I could never accept a religion that excluded folks based simply on the color of their skin as "perfect." It was enough to put me off organized religion for good. Now, I didn't exclude Romney, today's most famous mormon next to Donny & Marie, from those I felt might make a decent POTUS because he was a mormon. I do have a problem with a leader who's continued membership in his church implies that his church was justified in curtailing anyone's ability to worship for decades, but mostly it was his republican affiliation that I found repelling, not his faith. Mormon or not, if I felt Mitt was the best choice to lead Our country, I would have endorsed him regardless of his ontological choices. I can sense I'm starting to lose some of you, so let me get back to the gritty of the nitty, so to speak. I suppose what bothers me the most about where Our religious beliefs have led us as a Nation is the idea that Christianity holds some kind of trump over other faiths here. First off, it's bunk. Our wise founding fathers, many of which eschewed Christianity for more universal Deist beliefs, recognized the fact that pushing any faith as Our National Faith was a dangerous proposition. They used all the blood uselessly spilled in the European struggle of catholicism against protestantism and the tragedy of the Salem witch trials as proof positive that religion should be left up to the individual, not government. This ideal stuck for a while. At least until the Christian Revival movements that arose in the mid 19th and early 20th centuries. Now things have devolved to the point that many Christians believe that we were founded as a Christian Nation. The Communist scare of the 40s & 50s prompted the government to insert "God" into various aspects of Our lives like our Pledge of Allegiance, sadly, without ever realizing how it infringed on the rights of Our fellow citizen Atheists. Now we're at a point where there seems to be a religious test for the office of president, and you CANNOT pass said test unless Christ is in your equation. And now there’s talk about Sarah Palin being a Dominionist /Kingdom Now follower , one of the neo-charismatic sects whose goal it is to turn Our nation into a Christian theocracy. You may be familiar with the movement if you’ve ever seen the movie Jesus Camp. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a Islamic POTUS who respects diversity than one who believes Christianity should be Our official religion and approves of training our children for some upcoming spiritual war. Now anyone who has trolled my profile should know that Jesus of Nazareth is one of my personal heroes. I view him as one of history's most benevolent iconoclasts, opening the best of Judaism's principles for all to follow while railing against some of the faith's most antiquated and hypocritical tenets. He opened up the belief that we could all be chosen, if we make the right choices, and that no one is lesser than anyone else. Unfortunately, Jesus was assassinated before truly realizing his vision, and as typically happens after such a tragedy, his followers chose to venerate the Man over his Message. Like Buddha, Jesus was elevated by his followers to the point where living by his ideals of Love of ALL and that belief in God need not be bound by region or nationality meant nothing unless one also added Jesus to one’s pantheon. I believe this is antithetical to Jesus' teachings, and continues to corrupt Christianity to this day. So not only is it troubling that we question Obama's faith, but more troubling is the fact that being Christian has become a litmus test for Our highest office. It's not just imperative that a viable candidate be Christian, but We've now gotten to the point where it's important how "good" and "devout" of a christian one is. Not only is this antithetical to Jesus' teachings, but it runs counter to Our nation’s ideals. If you don't believe me, look at the recent study that shows an overwhelming percentage of Our fellow Americans no longer believe there is only one path to salvation. Sadly, I can do little but watch as a very vocal minority (those who adhere strictly to the idea that the U.S. is or should be a Christian nation) continues to push its agenda and denigrate those who oppose them or may stand in their path. Worse, they perpetually prod Our nation frighteningly closer to theocracy. Even with all that, I continue to hold on to the hope that, as usual, common sense will eventually prevail in our fine nation. Then I can look forward to the day when even a simple agnostic like myself, one who truly respects Everyone's right to worship as They see fit, can successfully run for Our highest office.

KEEP HOPE ALIVE (that means donate)

What I Hope For

When discussing issues the media usually refer to the more popular ones—the meat, as they say. And sure, I get why everyone’s always talking about the economy. Things are still rough out there. I was one of the new numbers on the recently released unemployment figures. Then there’s Iraq, and National Security which, of course, is very important—something We can get back to when our Boys (& Girls!) come back from Iraq. However, you shouldn’t forget that even seemingly smaller issues can mean a lot to many of us.

Take Our drug policy. I know, we don’t really have much of one. The number of impoverished crackheads and heroin addicts I see everyday on my way through Lexington Market in the heart of Baltimore hasn’t dwindled much since the beginning of The War on Drugs. (Funny how throwing the word war around has become the standard way to show Us how to solve Our problems.) But Our government has been fighting the same War for a generation now, and other than making a few small dents in the supply and warehousing a lot of people in jails that continue to overcrowd, not much has changed—at least not on the federal level.

At this point I should make it clear why this issue means so much to me—other than the fact that I live three blocks away from Lexington Market. Those of you who might have read My Letter to the Superdelegates, which I wrote when it looked as if things might come down to them, or my flash fiction Bus Stop, or many of the other things I’ve blogged already know that my family has been ravaged by drug addiction. For those of you who don’t know, I lost my mother to AIDS in 1991. Although a loving and courageous woman, a woman who helped new arrivals from Puerto Rico and other Latin American areas settle and adjust to life in Baltimore, she battled with heroin addiction most of her life.

A few years later, I lost my uncle. He was a character, in and out of jail for a lot of his life, hustling when he was out. But sometimes he was the closest thing I had around to a father. He was usually very good to me. Like my mother, he was a heroin addict and ultimately succumbed to AIDS.

My baby brother was barely 17 when my mother died. Although he became a hard worker and a loving father, he suffered greatly after the death of our mother. He also turned to drugs—crack and heroin. On the day after Christmas, 2006, Joe became the latest in my family succumb to AIDS.

The rest of my family has been more fortunate, but I see the ghosts of what my family has been through every day I step out for lunch. And it’s not just the poor. I’ve been privy to the same sad excesses within Our wealthiest families; and other than more and better recovery facilities and less law enforcement scrutiny, their stories are no less tragic than mine.

So when it comes to drug policy, perhaps it’s not as much of a priority as National Security, but certainly should be close behind when you stop to consider how drug abuse continues to destroy Our lives, Our families, Our children, Our schools and Our neighborhoods. What else has to be destroyed before drugs do become a matter of National Security? Bottom line: one of the myriad of reasons I will NEVER vote for them is because that would mean my lunch breaks will never change. The faces will, but the same problems will still haunt me, along with the memories of everything drug addiction has taken away from me.

Maybe a President Obama will not be able to fulfill my dream of a nation where addicts are getting whatever treatment they need, and where we initiate programs to eliminate illegal drug trafficking intelligently instead of with the brute force that has been so ineffective for so long. There’s a lot of work to do and to undo to get there. However, he is the only hope I see of getting Us on that path.

¿Got Hope?

It's been a while since I've written. I guess I've been living in the afterglow since I realized that Ob had clinched the nomination. But considering I've since lost my job, I figure there's no longer any excuse not to write, especially after peeping in on the folks that have been allowed to run ram shod over Washington for the past eight years.

Personally, my instinct tells me this is a lock. I genuinely feel that folks won't allow another four years of our country in the hands of those who nearly ruined it. However, I also felt we had a lock in '00 & '04. Of course, my instincts weren't THAT far off the mark.

Nevertheless, I refuse to sit idly back while the opposition whittles away the best bit of hope we've found so far during this yet young century. I've done more. I've supported Ob with my words and my wallet. I've taught others of the importance of voting–that not voting is actually a vote for the status quo. I don't know about you, but the status quo hasn't done much for me lately.

And those wily republicans will try to whittle the hope away. They derided community organizing as if it were meaningless. It wasn't meaningless to the children I used to deliver supplies to with the Education Based Latino Outreach(EBLO) before their first week of school–children who would have otherwise been unprepared for learning. And after all this talk about experience they make this about personality. Issues came in 2nd to "lLook at me! I'm ready to be your next Whatever."

This time they won't get away with it. They can't. We can't afford it. I'm committed to do more. I hope you are too.

¡Help me pimp Hope!

The Speech

I pulled this off HuffingtonPost. I don't know about you, but for me this excerpt sums-up exactly what I want (¡and don't want!) out of government—the type of government that helped me get to where I am today. Barack Obama delivered the speech at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois in June, 2005.

Like so much of the American story, once again, we face a choice. Once again, there are those who believe that there isn't much we can do about this as a nation. That the best idea is to give everyone one big refund on their government--divvy it up by individual portions, in the form of tax breaks, hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own education, and so on.

In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it--Social Darwinism--every man or woman for him or herself. It's a tempting idea, because it doesn't require much thought or ingenuity. It allows us to say that those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford--tough luck...It let's us say to the child who was born into poverty--pull yourself up by your bootstraps...

But there is a problem. It won't work. It ignores our history. It ignores the fact that it's been government research and investment that made the railways possible and the internet possible. It's been the creation of a massive middle class, through decent wages and benefits and public schools that allowed us all to prosper. Our economic dependence depended on individual initiative. It depended on a belief in the free market; but it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we're all in it together and everybody's got a shot at opportunity.

¿So what do you think? ¿Do you disagree? ¿If so, how do you think government should work? & if you do agree—well maybe you should spread the word...