I've been doing a lot of edgy (for me) things lately.
I'm generally the kind of guy that takes the exact same number of steps from bed to shower, shower to coffee pot, pot to car, car to office, and so on until my head explodes like a water balloon on a stove top. I don't mind routine, but once I shake it I realize the importance of seeing things from a different view. Our minds have a rigid tendency to conform to the known. We like to feel comfort, yearn to feel safe and it gives us great joy to be in control of our surroundings, feelings and vision. It starts from the first moment you were swaddled in your mother's arms and your heart rhythms still matched.
To get some edge back, I'm trying to drive a different way home from work, if only by a block, every single day. (So edgy you could just faint, right?)
You remember "Fear Factor"? The show pitted normal people (and sometimes B list celebrities) in a competition to take on physical challenges for glory and cash. Thing is, they really weren't all that physical to begin with. As the title of show implies, the challenges were almost always mental. I know I don't want to eat a 20-ounce Wolf Spider on my own time (and for free), but here I am with a bunch of strangers watching me do it. I'm confident this network has gone to great lengths to ensure that Wolf Spiders aren't in any way poisonous (lest a contestant die on National TV) and that its really no different than a sandwich. I can see the $50,000 on the table over there, but I can't shake the notion that maybe, just maybe, this is the King Wolf Spider no scientist has ever seen and he's positively loaded with poison and this will become a Faces of Death movie on You Tube in 5 minutes.
It's not that I can't physically do it, it's that I'm mentally not WILLING to accept the challenge because I never physically have done it and survived. But after one Wolf Spider and seeing my checking account balance grow by the grand prize amount, I bet I could eat a Wolf Spider every day (provided the prize would repeat itself). No longer a fear...no longer a factor.
So the edgy thing I've been doing is reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, and applying some of his logic to my own thought concerning world events of today. Edgy in the sense that I was raised Roman Catholic and my kids attend really terrific Catholic and Jesuit schools and my wonderful Mom is the single most devoted and loving Christian woman I've ever met. Edgy in the sense that I have taken a different "route to work".
Dawkins is a noted atheist and an outspoken one at that, and I'm not writing to inflame anybody or to praise or quote him- or to state any particular fact about myself- other than to mention that, in reading and pondering some of the ideas presented to my brain that had been previously on the self-imposed "off limits list" I grew up with and around, it sparked me to write.
I'll try to keep this subject condensed, and if you already stopped reading I don't blame you, but here it is:
Michael Sam/Jason Collins/Arizona/Kansas/Uganda/Russia/Etc.
I am not asking that you try this exercise, I am simply telling you that I tried it. I promise you won't die if you close your eyes and reach into the cage with me. The prize if you can achieve this task is totally up to you, it's not mine to give. Oh you WANT to try it?
Ok, close your eyes tight. We are going back in time now to the day of your birth.
You are thirty seconds old. Your mother is cradling you in her arms, feeding and swaddling you.
Stop there.
We haven't yet been to the bris or the baptismal font and we never hit a synagogue or mosque. Stop there, at that moment when your mother first held you. That love that she felt right then, for you alone, unimpeded by any outside influence, was the truest form of love- more powerful than a thrashing atom bomb, tomahawk slam dunk, passionate pulpit-pounding sermon all packaged in a blazing guitar solo. Anything else you "learned" or were "taught" about love from then until now- about law and about right and wrong- were just watered down versions of true and pure love (or hatred), passed on from eons of error-prone human beings.
Keep your eyes closed.
Did she whisper anything in that first breath into your face about hell, damnation, bigotry or sin? She didn't, did she? Of course not. Because in the instance of pure and unalloyed love, there is no such thing. It cannot exist-this love- with any hint of hate or bigotry or fear. As soon as that part rolls in, it's just your path, your future routine. They begin to shape you, for better or worse, in their own image. It's out of love, quite literally and (sometimes) quite sadly.
Keep your eyes closed.
Now it's been a year. You've been to the bris or the baptismal font or the mosque. Does she still love you? Of course. Has it been reinforced by a belief system? In some indelible way, you must admit that it has, regardless of which outside influence you've been living in. That love is never pure like that again. It has boundaries and structure. Notice I am not singling out Christianity or Wicca or the Mosque or Hinduism or Scientology. It's earth, and it's huge and people are...well, strange and imperfect.
But if you could reproduce that instant post-birth feeling you only once had- bottle it and take a shot of it and and re-experience it again, how would it feel to immediately turn on your television in that state of mind and see a story about the Arizona legislature passing a bill that would allow for the discriminatory treatment of hundreds of thousands of people, once babies born into perfect circles of trust and love, now adults and no different than they ever were, except for through the eyes of...
God?
Surely not. Surely this is human bigotry. Surely the same God who gave a mother the love and energy to stare into her son's eyes and make that initial connection, surely that God hasn't also just coerced the Arizona legislature to give her the legal right to refuse service to him in the diner where she works because he's gay. Surely that God didn't just persuade the President of his own country to make it illegal and punishable by life in prison for a baby girl to be gay and to be born in Uganda. No way, right?
Hell. No. That hatred and bigotry is all yours and you are free to get rid of it any time you like.
Saying this out loud is me eating my giant Wolf Spider. My account balances are growing in empathy, respect and happiness- for myself and for all other imperfect humans.
You can open your eyes now.
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