Politics and Religion, Y'all

There are at least two things I don’t write about much, but times being what they are, I decided that I need to take a moment to write about politics and religion.

This last week, I had a meltdown.  The proximate cause was a group of people showing up to play pickleball.  It was several families with approximately 87 children ranging in age from about 14 on down.  The men were dressed like anyone else coming to pickleball.  The women were all wearing skirts with hems that fell below the knees.  Even the toddler girls were wearing skirts like that.  Of course I was polite and friendly because that is how I roll.  Everyone was perfectly well behaved.  The adults and the older children all played with the other folks who showed up.  And my anxiety grew the whole time.

 

Let me be clear.  The people did absolutely nothing wrong.  They seemed to be nice, well-adjusted folks with a strong sense of family.  They played together.  They seemed healthy and happy.

 

And they scared the heck out of me.

 

I’m going to make an assumption or two or ten here.  I will assume that most women would not choose to play sports in a long skirt without a good reason.  I’m going to assume that the good reason in question was that these women believed it was the appropriate, decent attire.  I’m going to assume that the adults believe that they should train up their daughters to be decent women (all the children, with the possible exception of the very new baby were girls, so I can’t speak about sons).  I assume, based on what I could see, that these families cared about each other.  But I have the roaring heebee-jeebees about one premise of that culture being that women need to dress a certain way.

 

Yes, I know that we are all enculturated.  We swim in cultural waters we can’t perceive most of the time.  My normal is not universal.  I won’t presume to tell anyone that my culture is The Way It Should Be.

 

The thing is, in our political situation, there are a lot of folks out there who DO want to make their culture The Way It Should Be.  What kind of skirt I wear is, ultimately, no big deal.  But if someone wants me to wear a particular kind of skirt, it’s not that far to go to other kinds of control issues.  I very much want to be in control of my own body, my own property, my own being.

 

I am afraid.  These pickleball-playing folks were truly nice people.  And I worry that they were the kind of people that made good Nazis.

 

I am afraid and I am a white person of privilege.  I can’t even imagine the microagressions and macroagressions that make up daily experience for BIPOC and underprivileged people.  I fear for my trans child, for my LBGTQ+ friends, for all the precious weirdos who make my life rich and diverse and wonderful.

 

I was the frog this last week, finally realizing that the water is getting darn hot.  The cumulative stress got to me.

 

In this context, I went off to church on Sunday, as I do.  I am blessed with wise priests in my church.  One of those wise priests preached about fear and faith.  It was exactly what I needed to hear.

 

The world seems pretty dark and hopeless a lot of the time.  What keeps me going is faith.  I don’t know how it’s going to work out.  I don’t understand what the heck God is going as we go through this pile of crap.  I yell at God about that from time to time.  (God can take it.)

 

Which brings me to my favorite saint.  The photo at the top of this is Botticelli’s version of St. John the Baptist.  John’s job was to prepare the way for the Lord.  He did that, even when it was weird and hard and complicated (at least there was honey to go with those locusts…).  And he did it even when he didn’t know if it was working.  He sent his disciples to check Jesus out because he just wasn’t sure.  If John could wonder, I can, too.

 

Friends, I’m going to be out there trying to be friendly and kind and wonderful and also trying to ensure that the future is available to all of us, no matter what color we are, who we love, how we identify, and all the rest.  Faith, I hope, will see me through.

 

And please:  vote like someone’s life depends on it.