Category: Essays

The United States of the World

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

I watched the Opening Ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics last night.  I could write for an entire day about the artistry, precision, and beauty of the spectacle and still not even come within spitting distance of describing it.  How can you not love China?  Tea, calligraphy, tai chi.  Okay, so there’s smog, human rights abuses, and communisim, too, but they still get high marks for the tea.

I love the Olympics.  I enjoy the athletic competition, but that’s really secondary.  I love the Olympics because for that one brief fortnght every two years, governmentsare not the most important players on the international scene.  Presidents take a backseat to pole vaulters.  Dictators are knocked off the front page by diskus throwers.  Sultans don’t have as much gold around their neck as a few really incredible swimmers.

I appreciate the feelings of national pride people can experience around the Olympics.  The Chinese were sure strutting their stuff last night.  And I suppose if I was there I might even chant a few “USA”s myself.  But national pride has a dark side.  It’s an “official” form of bigotry.  We’re from Iraq, so we get to hate Iran.  We’re from Japan, so we get to despise China.  We’re from the U.S., so we get to glare suspiciously at North Korea.  As if people are really different once a national border is crossed. 

The Olympics present a wonderful opportunity to put political ideologies aside and root for the human spirit.   I don’t really care if the American girls win the gymnastics medal or the Romanian girls.  I would absolutely love to see the Island nation of Samoa or the Democratic Republic of the Congo go home with a medal.  ANd some of the best Olympic stories are about the non-medal winners.  I applaud them all. 

I am a citizen of the world and my race is human.  So when the Russians win or the Chinese or the French or the Americans, I swell with pride and sometimes even cry a little during the anthem.

Confessions of a Recovering Fundamentalist

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

Why is it that every time I have heard, read or thought of the concept that we should “Pray for those who persecute us,” at least in my adult life, I have thought about praying for Christians?   Please note, I did not say “most times” or “many times.”  It truly is, to my best recollection, every time.

When I was a child, it was easier to see the world in black and white.  A person was either right or wrong.  There could be no other option.  And since we were, of course, right, then everyone who was not us, or with us, or at least immensely similar to us was, as a strict matter of course, wrong.  And, being a child, these very simple rules to this very simple game were easy to grasp.

The idea, however, is to put away childish things as we grow up.  (I might have plagiarized that a bit from the Apostle Paul, but I didn’t want to actually start quoting scripture on ya’.)  In the same way that a Candyland game can no longer give me hours of endless pleasure and a Big Wheel seat no longer fits my ass, so too does the absolute condemnation of those believing something different no longer fit with a mature outlook on humanity.

Persecuting others through religious judgement, condemnation, or bigotry is hateful and cruel.  But, it’s also childish.  And these children’s games create division, violence, and even war.  Perhaps rather than praying for those who would persecute me or you or anyone else, I’ll just pray that we all grow up.

Smoky Mountain Sorrow

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

This past Sunday, a gunman entered a Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, TN, and opened fire.  At last count, I believe two were dead and more were in the hospital.  The gunman’s motivation, in his own words, was to “kill some liberals.”

I know a little bit about the Unitarian Universalist Church.  I’ve read their seven principles and agree with them all.  So my personal there-but-for-the-grace-of-Allthatis-goes-I feeling vibrates really close to my center.  Loving, serving, tolerant respectful people enjoying a children’s performance.  I have no doubt that a picture of the congregation just before the gunman entered would have shown smiling faces of joy and proud contentment.

I know a little bit about East Tennessee conservatives, too.  Were it not for those isolated pockets of religious liberals like those found at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, “East Tennessee conservatives” would be a redundant term.   Just across the Cumberland Plateau from where I live in Nashville lies a conservative breeding ground second to none.   I know about these folks because counted among their number is my father and his side of my family.  (Before things get out of hand here, let me be absolutely clear that neither my father nor anyone in his family would walk into a church on a Sunday morning, even a liberal one, with a shotgun and intent to kill.)   My only point here is that I am indeed familiar with the brand of conservativism bred in the hills of East Tennessee and because of that, sadly, I was not the least bit shocked to hear the gunman’s admission of his motive.

My only hope is that the miracle that rises out of this great tragedy, and there will be one, will be an increased understanding, a spreading tolerance, a respect for others which begins to take root in the red clay they call dirt over there.  I hope the miracle of this includes recognition by a few conservative talk show hosts that the wry, bitter, edgy indictment of liberals they spew on a daily basis just really isn’t entertaining anymore.  And I mostly hope the miracle of this includes reminding a few East Tennessee Baptist, Church of Christ, and Nazarene churches that someone once said, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

Avian Search and Rescue

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

I need to tell you about the birds.

They lived in the eave of our house from the moment light first beamed through that initial crack of the shell.  Their mama had picked the safest place possible.  The opening created by 30 years of rain on now rotting wood was just big enough for the full-grown female grackle to pop in and out, first carrying in strands of grass, string and paper, then leaving just for brief moments of nourishment during the egg-guarding days, and finally returning each morning with worms in her beak, uneaten, to be delivered to her babies and their directly vertical, gaping beaks.

We watched this process from the back deck.  Saw the mother in and out, then eventually heard the tinkling peeps, saw the mother returning with worms, heard the peeps grow stronger.

Partially because of the birds we began to notice more closely the dilapated condition of certain parts of our house.  It was time for repairs.  We contracted with a company for new gutters, new soffits, and new windows, basically everything you could do to the outside of a house except the siding.  At the corner where the bird nest was located, they would replace the rotting wood and then cover it with vinyl wrapped aluminum — siding material.  I was hoping the birds would be grown and gone by then, but was determined to have the workers remove nest and birds to a nearby tree if adolescence had not yet been reached.

And here’s what happened.  The workers came.  They did their job.  And the birds were sealed up into our roof.  It doesn’t matter who is responsible or how it happened.  It only matters that the next day we were met with two dogs and at least one cat staring intently at a wall in our house that had mysteriously begun to flutter.   A bird, how big we did not know, had hopped its way across our attic and dropped into a wall.  And for 24 hours we listened, fretted, and debated what to do.

What we did was to save the birds.   I got my drill and put on the big round drill bit designed to cut a hole for a door knob.  Then we started surgery on our wall.  After three conjoining holes were completed, the bird flew out and landed on our mantle, then to the couch.  Susie caught it in both hands.  I filled a dropper with water and we tried to give it a drink.  We went outside and I found a worm, cut off a half-inch piece and tried to drop it into the shocked bird’s mouth.  We set it on the woodpile and went inside, leaving nature in charge.

We felt pretty good about ourselves for a few minutes, even with a swiss cheese wall, and then we heard it again.  More fluttering.  Same wall.  Between two different studs.  Out with the drill, more holes, another bird delivered to the outside world.

It was one of those events that stays with you for awhile.  It felt huge on some level.  We had saved two lives and ruined one wall.  It seemed like an obvious trade-off.

After they sealed up the eave, we watched the mother bird return for several mornings desperately trying to find the hole leading to her children.  It was heart-wrenching, and I hoped later that they managed to find each other again after our rescue, but I’m not sure nature works that way.

I’m not sure what the lesson was for me.  Children leave, sometimes in non-traditional ways?  All life has value?  Letting nature take it’s course sometimes requires our involvement since we’re nature too?  D, all of the above?

Or maybe the lesson is . . . if you ever have a bird stuck in your wall, forego the interior design debate.  Just get your drill.