Jan 27 2006
not all black and white…
earlier this week, i received a note in my inbox. this particular note was not of a friendly nature. usually i just let things roll off my shoulders and close it, delete things i’m not interested in reading, and get on with my day.
i have been chewing on this all week, and i just can’t let it go.
this particular email began with an apparent Andy Rooney stating “I don’t think being a minority makes you a victim of anything
except numbers. The only things I can think of that are truly discriminatory are things like the United Negro College Fund, Jet Magazine, Black Entertainment Television, and Miss Black America.”
that was enough to make me nauseous.
i read on, about ‘I have the right “NOT” to be tolerant of others because they are different, weird, or tick me off.’
and ‘My father and grandfather didn’t die in vain so you can leave the countries you were born in to come over and disrespect ours.‘
…inbetween other derogatory commentary regarding the right to use guns, and not liking homosexuals, tattoos and spanking children.
by the time i finished i was angry, sweating, and fairly close to throwing up. nice, eh?
even more, this email is going around trying to shimmy up some sort of collective declaration and agreement amongst peers.
what got me most was that this note ended with a bit about pleadging allegiance to the American (and ‘Canadian’ — thrown in for good measure, making it apparently appropriately Canadian ‘enough’ for Canadians to pass around) flag and God, and if you were not of the 86% of people ‘in this country’ who were loyal to ‘God’ (being of the European American Canadian Christian kind) you could just hit delete [ie. don't bother to reply, we don't want to hear it].
now, i am not the type of person to blast my values into other’s faces unless asked, and really and truly, i hope that ’show’ in my case is more apparent than ‘tell.’ i’m also not the type to preach about and wear my spiritual inclinations on my sleeve.
but i am strong and firm in my spiritual ideals.
and, try as i might, i couldn’t sit here without saying something about it.
what comes to mind is, considering the implicit nature of this email being basically racist and uniculturally narrow-minded and presumptuously ‘in the name of God’, [thereby imposing guilt on all folks who go about in the name of God who don't actually agree] some folks really need to go back to Sunday School.
the first thing that comes to mind is they have forgotten the first song they probably ever learned there… maybe they need to relearn it. it includes the words ‘all the children of the world.’ i’m sure you know it, even if you’ve not been to Sunday School.
the second thing which comes to mind is ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.’ hmm, now there is something to chew on and wonder about whether it’s a good thing to be sending around emails full of intolerant inaccuracies in the name allegiance to God and country. i think i’d be prayin’ if i were them… but, i’m not of the mind to try to determine what others should do nor do i generally tell others what they should do.
i grew up in the Lutheran Church. although i have a different kind of spiritual inclination these days, i am still quite versed in what i experienced back then, what i absorbed and what i didn’t feel right about. i can relate to why people like to be members of a congregation. i can also see how, at times, certain ideologies can become skewed and get out of hand and narrow in scope. to that i simply say (and have said), to each their own.
on a personal level, i remind myself on a daily basis to look at my own face first. i practice self-reponsibility rather than judgment and blamefulness; i incorporate visualization and connective meditation (so i don’t forget to pay attention to the energies of the world and other human beings as well of the general connective nature of all things on this planet and in the Universe… gee that sounds heavier than it is in practice!) and as well, remember the threefold law [which may also be interpreted as 'an eye for an eye' or 'you reap what you sew']…. on that note, i really hope i don’t wind up with some weird groin injury after all my jeering and griping about Eddie Jovanovski. ;) i believe in a collective consciousness and hope, for my children’s sakes, that appreciation, not tolerance, someday become the norm.
i guess my point is, what IS the point of spewing about hatefulness and expecting to start or get on some collective bandwagon in favour of intolerance in the name God and the American (oh, and the Canadian, too) flag? some sort of ‘yeehaw’ ego boost?
i don’t get it. i don’t get why anyone would get it.
obviously this kind of email doesn’t exactly sit well with my personal vision for the world. and i have been wrestling with saying anything whatsoever about it… but there, it’s said.
i do feel better having gotten that off my chest.
ok, back to knitting… ;).
