Different levels of communication effect communities in ways that people don't consider when they make decisions without specifically discussing all of the information necessary in board meetings and council sessions. Recently, I was the topic of discussion at a senior center where I live. In employment contracts in NM, sometimes the clause, "mode of living" will be in the contractual agreement. The phrase "mode of living" means completely different things based on the community a person is from, class level, perceived class level, education, and basically everything in a person's life.
People are generally driven by primal needs when they don't even ask another person what that person has to say about anything. For example, the group of people who sat around to discuss me. Never actually spoke with me, personally -- the group. They accepted one person's interpretation of what I said, but that person never told me that she was reporting what I said to someone else. She never said anything about telling other people that she was discussing my home or anything that I was doing. She obviously thought that she was already entitled to a certain role in my life. No. She is not. Then, they sat around discussing where I needed to go and where I was allowed to live. Then, what happened, a man named Brian, who is usually inebriated showed up to tell me that I needed to go to the Community of Hope to get help and beg for money because he prayed about it. I'm not supposed to worry about anything because "you'll get a girl." The amount of social control via the verbally stated Christianity in the city I live in is tremendous.
It is a game to claim Christianity and live anyway people want more than anything else. The problem with it here is that I am Biblically literate. I don't know every single word in the text; however, I do know that an actively using alcoholic's advice, even while claiming prayer and a belief in Jesus, is not sound advice. Even God communicates with individual people about their lives. The reason people don't communicate with others about situations and events is directly because of the risk of being wrong or for the need for personal change. Having a stand point and expecting everyone to fit the mold devalues divine creative design.
Everyone has a "fix" for that person's community. Some people think that it is hiding the homeless. Some people think it is imprisoning the poor or incriminating transgender people. Some people think that it is alcohol and others think that it is their own personal quest for happiness. Lots of people think it is their enforced Gospel stance, yet they don't understand that they are persecuting the same people who are working with them and helping to support them. Why? Sameness.
Sameness is primal. All too often someone will say to me, "but you have more ______ than me. I only have 2." This happened last night. Ownership is about choice. The person who said it to me is constantly drunk or looking for the next drink. I don't spend any money on alcohol. I don't spend any money on drugs. I am constantly accused of being active drunk or a drug addict all of the time. Why? People need others to be just as depraved as they feel. They don't have anything, so they don't think other people should have anything. The same person was surprised that I owned plates. Why? He claims he doesn't have any and claims that it makes him more poor than me.
The U.S. Mexico border to include parts of New Mexico have a poverty arrogance. People are proud to be poor. It's an odd game of who can live on less money. Who can own less? Why? Personal pride is the means through which most communities have striven to find their identities. Poverty is a game. Poverty is primal.
In poverty, people literally work to marry people still to have children to attain wealth. Why? People aren't valued as human beings as they need to be. In most families, the leader's happiness is what attains group cohesion.
For example, in my family of origin, most of us bonded together because we wanted my grandmother to be happy. After she died, most of us didn't talk anymore. Why? We were together for her to be happy. Her happiness was more important than our conflicts. Without her, the family would actually have to contend with the relationships that we never really built as we were bonded around one person. That person wanted us to be happy and make our own decisions. After she died, so did our family freedom. All of a sudden, no one was allowed to choose anything. Everything was about someone else's religion.
I earned a degree in religion because it was something that wasn't ever forced on me as a child and was a means to explore something new at the university. We were never forced to go to church or believe in anything when I was underage. It has only been since I have been over 30 that belief has been forced at me from other adults who mainly don't 1) know anything about me, 2) have any real training what they believe, or 3) accept difference of any kind.
When the final answer is "Just say Jesus. It makes them happy," belief is dead. If my faith is a matter of someone else's happiness, then a personal relationship with a deity is dead. When everything is about emotion, then it is doesn't matter that we can also think and believe. Every feeling is real. Not everything is a feeling. Causing poverty to convert people to your point of view because it is good for that person's soul is religious oppression and immaturity. Belief isn't an emotion. Entitlement in a belief system is arrogance. Choice is freedom. Working to make another person's life more difficult is the role of the Devil in the book of Job. Specifically working against another person because of an emotional state is, therefore, evil.
The Evil One works against people following God. I find it to be interesting that my kippah means that I don't have any kind of relationship with the Abrahamic God people find in the very scriptures that they quote to tell me that I 1) need to repent, 2) have turned away from Jesus, or 3) am wrong for worshipping with those Jews. Praying in a Jewish temple meant to some people that there is no Jesus there. My mode of living was recently questioned at a bus stop by someone who wanted to know if I was still worshipping with the Jews. Instead of religious discrimination clauses being able to be defended, people can now just claim that they need to approve of another person's "mode of living." Really?
I know a lot of devout Christians from temple. An omnipresent deity is not confined by brick and mortar. Primal instincts can be captured and imprisoned. God bless all of Remnant Israel.
Scene: While on the bus, people literally looked through the top of my shopping bag to see what I had in order to decide if I was allowed to have it. I had just been to Walmart and had gotten a shower caddy to organize art supplies as they worked really well in the classrooms in which I have been serving. I was asked, "how much were those markers at Hobby Lobby?" by someone probably half my age. I did not get them there as even with the 40% off coupon they would be more expensive that at Walmart. These two women literally had a conversation about my belongings because they have decided that unless they have something, then it isn't okay for anyone else to have anything. I know this because I had also purchased a small re-useable lunch bag and a re-useable ice block for it. The mother literally said, "it's okay to one that since I have those in the freezer." Then, the other said, "I moved those to the deep freezer." Then, the mother said, "Things have piled up on my night stand. Do you think I should get one of those?" She was talking about the shower caddy. So, I said, "they are on clearance."
They live in a house; I live in an apartment. I don't have a deep freezer. Nothing except a lamp and my glasses go on my night stand. Keeping my bedroom very simple and nearly empty has caused me to be able to have dreams again. The clock is under the main shelf on it as I have to maneuver my arm to get to it in an odd way. I can't accidentally shut it off. What these women are communicating is that they are striving to live on what they think is almost nothing. They are living in scarcity when they have far more than I do. They live with 8 people in the same house, and the daughter was jealous that her grandfather had bought her sister hygiene supplies when she didn't have a job. There's more to the story as the sister, the "baby daddy," and the new boyfriend are all unemployed and living in the same house with two children.
Without proper hygiene supplies, the woman can't possibly become employed. They tried to say that she was hitting rock bottom, and everything was her fault. Well, they are envious of shampoo, yet are upset that she has two kids, living with the grandfather, and had two live-in men with her while she's unemployed. I'm just a person on the bus they don't know, and they needed to figure out if I was allowed to have an ice block while trying to figure out if I was choosing the correct parts for my lunch. They need to be able to approve of what someone else is allowed to eat at work. Why? They need to control because they are controlled by objects and ideologies that have told them that they need to control others.
Most of the time, answers people have in conversations don't matter. I have learned in the city where I live that I have literally buy my way out of their constant evangelistic techniques because none of it is based on belief. It's a constant demand for money. People don't need what they think they need. People who have enormous houses and are easily bought because they buy into the American philosophy that more is better. I am growing some of my own vegetables, and their scruples are deciding whether or not I am allowed to choose to by an ice block. They live in a house -- they have more than me. People with five cars have said that I have too much. I don't have one.
I have simple keys. There are no key chains. There are no decorations. They are simple. I wouldn't trade my dreams for a TV in my room for my anything. I am simplifying. I dream.
I am blessed indeed.
Working in the Education Industry, I hear the phrase Separation of Church and State thrown around a lot. People are concerned about having the word or concept of God in the public schools. With the holiday season quickly approaching, these issues are beginning to arise more in conversation. I completely support the Separation of Church and State in education and completely support religious education in this country. Any government funded school in the United States should be teaching about religion, the differences in practices, and how people are able to reconcile their differences to maintain a cohesive community. Government funded schools should not in anyway be choosing one religious point of view over another through endorsing or prohibiting the practice of one person over another.
It is important to know the difference between enforcing a person's religion and the steps to educate another person about religion while being open to communication and exploration. The person who is chosen to education other people about religion or religions is given an incredible responsibility and gift. This kind of education can be done in a lot of ways. I haven't ever been a student enrolled at a school that was not funded in some way by the federal government. I have always been educated by people who have been given the responsibility and opportunity to teach in multiple ways. When religion is taught without an adherence to a specific belief, then it can be taught through the curriculum.
Art projects are a main way that religion can be taught without enforcing one person's religion upon other people. Art is often the precipice through which other forms of artistic expressions of religion are birthed. Literature springs from art in a lot of ways. Richard Crashaw's The Flaming Heart is a primary example of a work of literature being created from a sculpture combined with theology.
St. Therese had a vision of a cherub piercing her heart with an arrow in a mystic experience. From her experience, artists, musicians, and lyricists created artwork from the point of her experience to our contemporary artisans. Somehow, people think that the Separation of Church and State means that all religious experiences and mentioning of God has to be removed from education. By removing God and religion, every part of the curriculum in every school, essentially, ceases to exist. Literature, music, art, history, science, and even science is removed is there is a literal removal of religion and God from schools. At some point, human beings, both accept and don't accept deities. It is the responsibility of a civilized educational system to educate the students not only in what is accepted by the majority but what is accepted by the minority.
Atheism also needs to be discussed in the educational environments as they are the locales intended for exploration. Schools are not intended for indoctrination. Having places where people are empowered to think about what they are interested in to include God and how people approach or do not approach a deity or deities is a means to provide for understanding and the acceptance of differences. Misunderstanding the Separation of Church and State has caused more problems in educational environments than not. The main way that this is misused is through contemporary evangelism.
Evangelism is often as misunderstood as the Separation of Church and State. To be an evangelist is to merely carry the Good News. It doesn't presume a denominational or even a specific religious understanding. Contemporary American understandings of evangelism are usually directly tied to specific fundamentalist denominations, even though the term fundamentalist is misunderstood as conservative, republican, and mainly, non-denominational or Southern Baptist. Non-denominational is a actual denomination now, so I often find the attempt to say that it is okay to have a religious group in schools is okay because it is non-denominational to be a problem with the Separation of Church and State unto itself. The problems with evangelism are not in the exposition of options. The problems are inherent in enforcing one person's belief over another with the addition of negative consequences for not adhering to expressing belief through certain terms and conditions that are not mutually accepted.
While people tend to think that it is a gamble to give people the right to talk about their religion or God in government funded facilities which causes them to want to ban the topic, it is a gamble. The freedom of choice is often one of the most dangerous responsibilities that people have while taking ownership of their own humanity. Often it is easier to hand over our freedom of choice to others instead of choosing to own of our decisions. Perhaps, we understand our own choices as xenophobic because of the reaction of others around us. Often, while wearing my kippah, people have found it necessary to ask about the difference between Jews and Christians or shout that the Jews killed Jesus at me. I find the first one to be the most intrusive. It usually ends with me saying that there isn't anything wrong with being Jewish after having said that it more than just a religion, but also a race, ethnicity, and culture. This tends to bring the other person questioning me into a standpoint of wanting to know just about religion through which I say that the main difference is the accept of Jesus as the Messiah. I almost had one person throw a fit when I said that it was personal choice that people made. She couldn't handle it and when away in a huff because she was a churchian real believer in her model of Jesus. Jesus fighting is not for believers. Choice is!
Maintaining the freedom of choice to choose Jesus or not is what actually makes Christianity Christian. Without a choice, it isn't Christianity. It is Churchianity. If you a choice isn't inherent within a believer, then that person isn't a follower of Christ or an evangelist. That person is a crusader for a firmly enforced cause. There is no greater support from a nation for Christianity than the Separation of Church and State. If the people are not free to choose, then Christianity is not an option.
I hope to hear people singing about dreidels and Christmas trees. I want to hear about Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer and feel the tinkle of sleigh bells in the air during the upcoming holiday seasons. Perhaps, this year, we will all try to remember that, in the midst of making presents ready, that deities are usually about bringing peace to all people. I know that while I will be light candles at Hanukkah, Christmas, and the New Year to carry the light of God through the winter season, I will be remembering that it is through living in the light of God that we shine for one another.
Let go in peace through the month of October. May be embrace the Autumn season as the weather changes and the rains begin. Let us walk in love as we choose to be beacons of light in the world.
