Katrina and I have been sharing the crud the last few days. Neither of us is desperately ill, it is more an annoyance and hindrance than anything. Typical summer bug, snot, headache, runny everything, no appetite. General crud.
It comes at a very inopportune time for the two of us. We are actually opening our own business next week, and this is the week we have to get the studio ready for customers. We don't really have time to be sick, or lacking in energy or drive. This is the exciting time for us, the getting ready part. We are both very excited to be doing something of our own, something that is for us, and for others.
These are my worries. I mean, in all the legion of things that could be weighing on me, this is where my mind is. God is pretty great isn't He?
Where there is life, there is hope. I have no idea why that message was in my mind when I woke up this morning. I have a life full of hope. I have the surety of knowledge that God loves me, I am His, and I am forever. I am very comfortable, financially, compared to 98% of the world. I never forget that, there is nothing material that I need, that I lack. I have wants, but so does everyone. All my needs are met.
I get up early, and the only thing on, besides infomercials, is news. Well, it is mostly opinion on Fox, MSNBC, etc. The local news is generally just about the weather, the wrecks and the shootings in Fayetteville and Durham. I ignore it to the maximum possible, while still finding out what the latest wild guess as to weather conditions currently is.
It is easy to get to the place that much of the nation is getting. That things are bad. That things are out of whack. We have wants that are begging for attention. That is our focus. We have NEEDS that we ignore completely. I am reminded that where there is life, there is hope.
I think about the latest street in Durham that has seen a murder. Or Fayetteville, the atmosphere is identical. It is easy for me; sitting in a beautiful home, comfortable that my next 20 meals are covered, that if the lights don't come on the bulb is blown, when it is 90 and humid outside, it is a comfortable 72 in front of this 24" monitor of my iMac; to disassociate the life that exists there. It is unreal to me today. I do not live, wondering where the rent money will come from. I do not live wondering what I would do if I were to be hurt or get seriously ill. I do not live wondering how I will get to the REAL grocery store, that is 5 miles away, instead of paying the corner convenience store prices. I do not wonder how to keep my children warm in the cold, or cool in the heat.
I do not live that existence, and it is easy for me to project my life balance, all focused on wants and conveniences, on an existence that is desperate from one need to the next. I admit to some sympathy to the internet cries of freeloaders and loafers taking all my tax money. I pay A.LOT. of taxes. I have no dependents, no deductions other than mortgage. The Fed likes my empty nest A.LOT. It does bother me that there is fraud associated with that money. I confess that I have seen the "lady" with the EBT card getting $25 worth of groceries, and $100 of luxuries that get loaded in the blacked out Yukon with $3000 worth of rims, and I have seethed. It is wrong.
So, I can project my privileged outrage on the entire program. Of course, my hackles go up instantly when it happens to me. When I get lumped in with the rest of the white, geezer, vets, and labelled a bigot, racist, Facist, neoCon. Because I served, I am only allowed to listen to Rush Limbaugh and vote Republican, whoever they serve up. I hate black people, I would abuse a gay person if I were to actually have one pointed out to me because I clearly don't know any, and I want to deport 150 million "Messicans" if that many are in the country. When I get pigeon holed like that, I despise it, and I don't deserve it. When I do it to others, I pay way less attention to the appropriateness of the emotion.
Let's assume that unlike the vast sea of my contemporaries, I am not now, nor have I ever been a fan of Limbaugh, the gaseous windbag that he is. I voted for Reagan, and a President named Bush, but he did not win reelection. I actually have two son-in-laws that are black (I don't know what you call people that are your son-in-law, but the wedding hasn't happened yet, so I am just going to use the familiar term.) I have several close friends that are way out of the closet, and I could care less, it is not a factor in my life or my relationship with Christ which is enough for me to keep up with. And, instead of spending like $75 billion dollars rounding up folks picking green beans and corn, if we were to bring them out of the shadows, require them to pay taxes, get them on insurance like the rest of us have to be, and act like we have some sense instead of xenophobia, it would be a good start.
I have opinions that differ from a lot of my contemporaries. I have life experiences that are different from most of my contemporaries. One thing I have never lacked is love. I have had a wonderful, supportive family for all of my life. I can never remember a day of my life, as a minor, that I could not point out 5 grown men instantly that loved me, knew me and watched over and mentored me. I can never remember a day of my life, as a minor, that I had no idea where a parental figure was, if I was hurt, scared, sick or worried. I never lived in fear of the next month's rent, or meal, though I came to find out my parents did, and worked like titans to keep it from me.
My life was, is and will be golden. I don't deserve what I have, but I have worked for it, made good decisions for it, and planned and achieved for it. I don't deserve much of anything in this world. But, what I have, I have earned. I wish I could say that for everyone. For where there is life, there should be hope.
But, if you are born in the 'hood, ghetto, projects, whatever it is named, hope is extremely limited. Before you condemn the next lady paying with her EBT card, who won't meet your glare, ask yourself if you would trade places with her? Do you really think she is living it up, shopping at the Food Lion for the generic brands, counting constantly in her head how much is left? Do you imagine that there is a path to riches or luxury associated with Food Stamps? I get the moral outrage, and I understand how wrong fraud is. But, be honest with me, do you think for one second you would trade places with the woman with the cart full of crap that was paid for with cash, that climbed into that Yukon?
Would you live where she lives? Would you accept the risk to your life, she accepts just because of where her home is? Would you like to have more of your male relatives dead, or in jail, by 21, than are not? Would you want your world to be the stark choice between the 1 or 2 that actually make their way in each generation, or the life happening in the streets outside your leaky window?
Before you start with the, "I got the same education that she did," crap, that I myself have spewed, you didn't. You did not learn the hard way that school was against you. Regardless of whether we like it or not, the system is not conducive to students that have chaos and poverty in their lives. They are not exposed to the same information by osmosis as "regular" children. No one in their homes is talking about politics, history, facts, figures, esoteric ideas like morality. That is a generalization, but can we settle on the likelihood that such conversations happen is very small in a project apartment? The system is set up to favor those with access to information, with access to safe time to review said information, with convenience that comes from not worrying or working to get something to eat before the school lunch the next day. It does not reward those whose life is a full time job, outside of school.
That is just the way that it is. If you can't see that, or don't understand that, I can't help you. I don't believe that it is deserved, or that it is necessary, or that it is right. You and I both know, regardless of the White Lives Matter crap you see spewed all over the internet, about racism against whites, no one writing that idiocy would be willing, for one second, to be non-white. Most of them do not think that because you are not white, that you deserve an unbalanced system or to be looked down upon.
Most think that if you work hard, you can make something of yourself. Because, when they didn't have to work hard on staying fed and alive, they worked hard on school, and made something of themselves. They stayed out of trouble, not because they didn't do anything wrong (me), but because they were white, they didn't get pulled over automatically when they were all piled up in a car. Because they didn't get that extra look, they didn't get caught. Had I had the same number of interactions with police, even in my little poor ass town in Maryland, that my friends that were black did, I doubt I would have had a clean enough record to enter the Navy at 17. I surely was not living the pure kind of life that would have supported a bunch of interactions with the police.
Because there is life, there should be hope. But, when living is the sole focus of your attention, it is hard to leave room for hope. When there is little room for hope, for thinking outside of your own immediate future and envelope, there is only the searching for immediate gratification. Might as well do it, because who knows if I will be here tomorrow. Of course, that applies to all of us, but it has been a long time since some child got shot in Flowers Plantation from a blacked out Yukon driving by in the middle of the night, unloading a Mac 10 on a house they think the homie is stayin' at. There is a difference between the statistically immaterial chance of serious cardiac issue for the vast majority of white children, and the real threat that large segments of our black, brown and "yellow" communities live within. You watch the news, you see it. That stuff doesn't happen on your doorstep, but it does on theirs.
Go to a "black" cemetery. I challenge you, count the number of headstones with male names. I will bet you, less than half are over 40, and in the ground. It is sad, it is horrific, but it is true. That is what life consists of for large portions of our populace. If it is only 5% of our population, which is about a third of the real number, that is almost 20,000,000 people. If we use the latest government guess, it is closer to 55,000,000 people. That is like the population of all of German, or all of France, or more than Belgium, or all of Italy or all of the UK. We, the human race, are breeding an alarming number of international terrorists from the ghettos of countries with better poverty rates than ours and with less than 20% of our population.
Want to blame issues on our black and Hispanic communities? That means there are more impoverished black people in America, than there are black/African/Middle Eastern people in all of Belgium and France and Germany combined. They are breeding Al Qaeda's and ISIS' next generation in Europe. What are we breeding? The faces and names that you see on the 6 o'clock news KIA in Afghanistan or Iraq this week, or shot to death by their neighbor in a drug deal gone wrong.
The path to greatness in our communities of poverty is through sports, for a very slim margin of them, or the military, for almost as slim a margin. There are not continuing narratives of success that relate to their lives. My kids looked at their teachers, knew they went to college, and knew they could do the same. Those kids in the 'hood, they know the teacher isn't allowed to hit them, and sometimes, most times, cares about them. They do not associate that teacher's life path with their own. We all find inspiration in the tale of the kid from the 'hood that made good. Because they are the exception that proves the rule.
What brought this on? I was reading a rant, from someone I do not know, on some thread of trivial crap that is made up, imaginary "news". We don't owe anybody anything. There are veterans on the street that we are not helping, but we want to bring in refugees. We give them food and scholarships. How about a white, heterosexual, working appreciation week? Kind of made me sick inside. I have said all those things before.
We owe everyone everything we can do for them. If you believe in Christ, and claim to be a Christian, that is just all you can say. It does not mean you are expected to give all you own, but there is no wiggle room, we owe them love. Complaining or judging them for using food stamps is not giving them the love we owe them. Silence about the poor state of parenting and child raising that exists in poverty, is not giving them the love we owe them. Parsing who deserves what, is not giving them the love we owe them. Condemning them for their sexuality is not giving them the love we owe them. Yes, I know it is true, because we are to love the sinner, and hate the sin. IT IS NOT OKAY TO HATE THE SINNER ALONG WITH THE SIN, AND CLAIM YOU LOVE THE.
That is hypocrisy, which is what Jesus condemned the most about the Pharisees. We are hypocritical, when we look at those struggling for the minimum margins in life, and act as if they should be happy with all the help they have available to them, wish we could get some of that. Really? You want some of the 'hood? You want to live on that street that you drive on at twice the speed limit with the windows rolled up and doors locked? You think that your life experience there would be really different? And it would today, because you were not born there, that was not your formation. Do you not understand that you were raised so differently and exceptionally from that, that you cannot relate to how hard it is? But, where there is life, there is hope.
Aren't we to be the hope? I mean, at the very core, aren't we supposed to be the hope for others? Isn't that how we are supposed to demonstrate Christ to the world? We are not supposed to be concerned about where our next meal comes from, because the Lord feeds even the sparrows, why are we so concerned about where "their" food comes from? We are not supposed to refuse to associate commonly with those that do not believe as us, up to and including eating food sacrificed to their idols, unless it will make them less likely to believe, so why are we so particular about how we associate with, or let LGTB people interact with society and our secular systems and laws? We are supposed to render to Caesar that which is Caesar's, including the part that goes to care for the poor and sick, so why are we so pissed that tax money helps feed kids at risk? We are supposed to pray for our leaders, for they are put in a position of authority from God, IT SAYS SO IN THE BIBLE, so why do we think Obama got elected somehow out of the control of God, and deserves to be villifiled? We are told to pray constantly, rejoice without ceasing, and give THANKS, so why do we spend so much of our time giving hate?
Where there is life, there is hope. That is the basis of God's call to our greatest commandment, go and baptize all peoples in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The exact same way you were baptized. Because, where there is life, there is hope for a salvation. Showing love does not mean what we are doing as a nation. The commandment Jesus gave, love others as you would be loved, and love the Lord with all your heart, mind and soul. Yeah, I don't know how you do that in the context of the current political debate.
So, I am going to peace out of the political discussions and season. I am going to take my own medicine, and watch my own language and state the things I ought, by the love of Jesus I was taught in love. I hope you do too. Whatever happens, God is in control, and He told us, where there is life, there is hope, for there is life forever in Christ. Right?
And, now, it is up to me to figure out how I go act. Not just say it, not just show it, but act. Because, this has to stop. We beat polio, small pox, measles, mumps, chicken pox, and a host of other issues. We ought to be able to beat endemic poverty that cycles generation after generation. We ought to be better at this after 240 years. We ought to mean more, do more, love more. It just is getting out of hand, all the stuff we are saying, thinking and doing to each other. It isn't about right or left, Dem or Republican, liberal or conservative. It is about right or wrong. And it is just plain wrong.
(And for those that read my blogs, that did grow up in the 'hood, the few of you I know had that experience, please forgive me for not speaking of you, or to you directly. This was just what was on my heart. I do not dismiss your struggles and triumphs.)
GLYASDI
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