Category: Religion

I have written openly about my Christ-centered faith on numerous occasions.  I rediscovered it relatively recently after rejecting it out of hand earlier in life.  The best way to describe the experience is that, for whatever reason or another, it found me, rather than the other way around.  A belief in a higher power keeps me mentally supple and not fixated on the superficial.  My faith points me to the way to live in peace among other people, and also within myself.  So, when I observe yet again how easy it is for the mere mention of Jesus or God to provoke a nasty, negative response in many, I feel tremendously sad.

On Tuesday afternoon, while returning from an errand, I stopped briefly at Union Station here in DC to get some lunch.  Union Station has long been a busy depot by which rail and bus traffic arrives and departs, and it also  serves as a rail and bus stop for area public transportation.  With the passage of time, part of the inside of the terminal has been  transformed into a shopping mall of sorts, which frequently satiates the boredom of tourists and passengers.  Predictably, it also houses a Victoria’s Secret.

This past holiday weekend I visited two Civil War battlefields:  Antietam and Gettysburg.  While part of my motivation to go was purely the tourist’s curiosity, I also went to remind myself of the multitude of ironies present in armed conflict.  It does me well to contemplate what I believe to be the overall futility of warfare, regardless of the context.  I certainly found plenty of both.  I chose to go in part to celebrate Independence Day in a completely different sort of context.  While I do appreciate the sacrifices made to establish a new nation and with it a groundbreaking experiment in Democracy, my pacifist beliefs often leave me deeply conflicted.  To move nearly one hundred years forward in time from the Revolutionary War to the conflict that tore a hole in our nation’s fabric seemed much more suited for the occasion.    

A Quaker minister recently spoke my mind and, as it turned out, the minds of many.  The thrust of his message asserted that we who are people of faith (and even those who do not identify as such) have over the years split into two camps.  One of them seeks to love his or her neighbor by means of social justice and direct service.  Some build houses for the poor.   Others seek to educate and empower those who live in Third World countries.  Still others take jobs in helping professions or non-profits designed to assist the less fortunate and the needy.  It is this aspect that is emphasized most heavily in progressive faiths and certainly by liberal unprogrammed Friends.

This morning, as an observer rather than a participant, I witnessed the annual Race for the Cure event here in DC.  It is, for those who may be unaware, a charity run/walk that has served as an effective means of raising funds to combat breast cancer. It also memorializes those who have tragically perished from the disease and celebrates those who have survived.  Before I begin, I certainly do appreciate the sentiment and the work that goes into it putting it on, but there’s a certain sort of commercialized, jocular, self-congratulatory aspect to the gathering that frequently makes me uncomfortable.  At times this morning I felt as though I was in some sort of motivational seminar, the kind that businesses often mandate that their employees must attend.  What I experienced firsthand today was a kind of glossy artifice when nothing could be more devastatingly real or raw than any person who finds herself or himself with a diagnosis of malignancy.  

I’d rather not entertain current events for a while, and instead tell you a bit more about the Quaker Young Adult gathering I recently attended.  Primarily this is because it is supremely depressing to contemplate the oil spill.  The beaches on Alabama’s Gulf Coast that I visited every summer as a child and young teen might be forever changed as wave after wave of oil washes ashore.  I may return to that at another time, but right now I am avoiding even thinking about it because it hits so close to home.  Returning to my original point, there are so many stories to share I hardly know where to begin, but I’ll start with one and go from there.

Editor’s Note:

I wrote this originally for a Quaker audience, but would like to share this with you as well.  I’ve added a few notes in the text to aid the comprehension of those who are not Friends.  I’ve also expanded the message to include those who are not people of faith.

The Author.

So I’ve been away for a couple of weeks, and it’s time to get back to a more demanding schedule…but before I do, I have a story to tell you that is so hilarious that we need to put it on the front burner so we can get the weekend off to a truly great start.

To protect the innocent we’ll leave out all the names, but suffice it to say that this story takes us to the intersection of religious evangelism, childlike innocence, and the idiosyncratic nature of autism.

Some of you are going to think I made this up, but I promise, this is an actual, true, “really, honest, it really happened” story, and every word is as accurate as it could be, considering that it was a tale told second-hand.

And with all that having been said, let’s go to Spokane, where our story has been waiting for us.

Nine months spent in Washington, DC, has provided valuable insight.  Beltway insiders and area professions are their own breed.  As I’ve gotten my sea legs, more and more of their world makes sense to me.  Once I arrived here that I was immediately given some particularly infuriating advice, namely that other people were just as smart as I was, if not smarter, and that I ought to get used to it.  I think he assumed I was just like everyone else—the latest newcomer eager to play the game in a town with more than its share of naked ambition and power plays.  Perhaps he was the latest candidate for burnout, having recognized that institutional idealism is often an exercise in minutia.  Though my background and my academic career may be relatively humble, I am no stranger to elitism when I see it, and I am just as repulsed by it now as I ever was.

So much of my life I spend cynically griping about the bad side of human nature.  The work I do every day frequently centers around a ceaseless source of constant frustration.  Seeking strategies to reform destructive behaviors is the basic skill set of many professions and basic activism.  Influencing people so that they might understand the correct means of conducting their lives is a substantial challenge and a constant energy drain.  I’m sure many of you understand this quandary all too well.  While it is true that we all possess a dark side, some more than others, recent events in my life have provided a unexpected but welcome sense of clarity and perspective. I note with joy over the past three days that I have, much to my great surprise, seen the very best in people.  Once again I am humbled to have been proven incorrect in my assumptions about others.

Earth Day… see also… Robyn, AndyS, Jamess and Eddie C. (so far!)