The Stars and Stripes

"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious." - Oscar Wilde

Has anyone stopped to ask, "Why is patriotism considered to be such a virtue in our culture?" It seems so utterly arbitrary to me. I would not go out and kill others and sacrifice my life for Marion County if it got into a squabble with Hamilton County. I would not kill Cub fans in the name of glorifying the Cardinals. What right does my nation have to my allegiance any more than my city or county or skin color or language or last name? We all define ourselves by particular social boundaries and then create civil religions in order to perpetuate those boundaries. Hence, we have pep rallies at our high schools. We have mascots for our sports teams. And we have the star spangled banner sung in our modern day worship centers (aka Lucas Oil Stadium). But I don't want to swear loyalty and a willingness to kill for my county or my state or my sports team or my skin color or my language or any other human boundary that we create between us. What if I'd been born in Mexico? Would I be an ardent, dyed-in-the-wool, willing-to-kill-others fanatic for Mexico? I hope not. That would be stupid.

I'd really rather swear my loyalty to humanity. Are you part of the species homo sapiens? Then I'm with you! It doesn't matter to me that you have squinty eyes or talk Swahili or use the yen to buy your groceries. It doesn't matter to me if you prefer communism or socialism or capitalism or anarchy or Obamaism. I just want to be part of your team. I want to join the pro-humanity party.

As I look around to various communities/nations/states/organizations/conglomorations of people with a common shaping identity, I can't find one that fits the bill just right. I want to be part of a nation that always loves the unlovable, that always invites and never excludes, that chooses harmony over war, that woos instead of coerces, that is filled with self-giving submission to one another, that embraces freedom and justice for ALL people, that doesn't need to compromise its standards in order to maintain power, that isn't ruled by an iron fist from above and is instead ruled through humility from below, that embraces Greg Coates for who he is and seeks to transform him into something far better than he could ever dream, and that is led by a benevolent monarch. Wow. If I could find such a country, I would pledge my allegiance to it and never pledge my allegiance to any other nation or institution or group.

And I did find it. And I'll never pledge allegiance to another again.

How Do I Force Myself to Like Someone?

I know that as a Christian it is my duty to love all. Holiness, in my understanding, is an ever expanding love for those different than myself. But sometimes certain people offer no qualities or characteristics that naturally draw me to them. Some people are dull and uninteresting. I know that sounds very harsh, but I think it is true. Ironically, I have no trouble "liking" people of other cultures -- although I may have very little in common with them. The people I struggle to like the most are those that are white, middle-class folk that read nothing interesting, write nothing interesting, and think nothing interesting. They seem content to live out their lives quietly, accomplishing very little, and having no desire to impact the world for the good.

My problem is this: I don't know how to manufacture a genuine desire to be around such people and talk with such people. I know that I OUGHT to like such people, but mostly they just annoy me and, if I'm honest, I would almost always choose to spend my time with someone else. Should I just resolve myself to "putting up" with certain people for the rest of my life? Or is there something I can do to make myself like and respect such people?

An Hour in the Life of a Mommy

The following was written by my lovely wife. I enjoyed it so much that I asked her permission to post it on my blog. This is far more interesting than anything I have ever written:

-----------

Yesterday I spent the good part of an hour explaining to the clerk at a public health clinic why I only had proof of income for my husband. I needed an aching cavity filled pronto, and the clinic down the street seemed the cheapest way to go. The only hold-up was the check stubs I'd brought along, which only had Greg's name on them.

“So you don't work?” he asked. “Then I need an official unemployment statement to show that you are unemployed.”

Unemployed. The “U” word. Adjective meaning unoccupied, idle, at liberty, jobless.

I'm pretty sure the guy doesn't have kids.

Lest any American citizen should forget, the mothers of young children are tireless workers who seldom sleep, eat, or use the bathroom while clocked out. We are union-less, require few breaks, and earn the saddest of incomes. Our achievements are rarely measured or noted, and on top of it all we have these outrageous hormones.

To illustrate this point, I will paint for you a picture of a mere hour of my day as a stay-at-home mom. This hour takes place between 1:30 and 2:30 pm on a Wednesday. Events occur in real time.

The hour begins as Greg settles down with Lydah in the living room to watch a movie. He is in between meetings, and has had lunch with us as usual. (It is such a blessing to live next to the church.) Now, the disciplinarian mom in me says, “Lydah shouldn't be watching a movie right now. It's nap time, not movie time.” But fun mom says, “Let it go, she can take the nap later. She's with her dad. This is quality time.” So I button my lip and go about changing Eve's diaper.

I should mention at this point that, in order to save on diaper expense and diaper waste, our family has embarked on a wonderful adventure called cloth diapering. And while they are more bank-friendly and much greener than their disposable counterparts, cloth diapers are terribly inconvenient when they are all sopping wet in the dryer.

So, I leave Eve diaper-less for a few minutes on the changing table (safely strapped in, of course), and run up to fetch some laundry.

About this time, Greg needs to head back to work (did I mention what a blessing it is to live right next to the church?). As expected of a nap-deprived two-year-old, Lydah begins sobbing dramatically about Daddy leaving her.

I come down to console her and find that sweet little Eve, in the 2.33 minutes I was away from her, has managed to have the most remarkable poop, sans the diaper to catch it. So there's poop on the table, poop on the wipes, poop on her clothes, and poop on her happily thrashing hands and feet.

I pin down her hands and speed dial Greg, who runs right over (such a blessing to live next to the church.)

We work together to rescue the baby from her mess, bathe her, and clean up the mess before his counseling appointment. Lydah, meanwhile, has settled back down to her movie and hasn't even noticed that Daddy came back.

I am in the midst of toweling off Eve, and Greg has just walked out the back door, when our door bell rings. So I run down the stairs with the naked baby and answer the front door, finding, of course, the church member who is wondering where her pastor is and is he still planning to meet with her and why doesn't he answer the church doorbell?

“He was just here helping me for a second. He should be there now. Try again!” I say in my super-sweet, covering-up-the-insanity-of-my-life voice. (Did I mention what a burden it is to live next to the church?)

Finally, I am able to dress the baby, and diaper her, using the now perfectly dry (and green and cheap) diapers from the dryer, and just as I am thinking about how nice it might be to have Lydah take that nap after all, I hear a voice from downstairs cry out, “I'm all sticky and wet!”

None other than the two-year-old has managed to cover herself with a bowl of canned peaches, which she has sneakily stolen from on top of the kitchen counter. As an aside, I have to say how impressed I was with her physical strength – I didn't even know she could climb that high. Not so impressive, however, was the horrible mess she had made carrying the bowl from the counter to the living room, and the sticky peach juice that was tangling up her hair and dripping down her neck and all over her clothes.

This, considering that I had just finished bathing the sister. This, considering I had just scrubbed and vacuumed all the floors less than 24-hours prior (in order to keep the sister from eating bits of trash she kept finding in the carpet). This, considering I had just changed Lydah's clothes for the third time that day due to pee-pee accidents.

All of this considering, I was at the end of my rope, and made the horrible mistake of asking, a bit too loudly, “Why in the world are you eating peaches in the living room?”

Now, I am the mother of a very sensitive daughter, and furthermore, I am very committed to talking respectfully to my children even in those moments when I want to scream till the shingles peel off. So Lydah's actions in the next moments are quite reasonable and forgivable. Mostly.

Rather than answering my question, my sweet daughter began throwing a truly awful tantrum, howling out “No! Mommy, no!”, stomping around in the peach juice, and throwing a pillow or two before I sent her to time out in the bathroom.

It was about this time that the hour ended, so I will spare you, Mr. Public Dental Health Clerk, all the details of the rest of my idle, unoccupied, unemployed day.

But for anyone else out there wondering what payment there is for a job like mine, I will let you in on what happened in the next hour, as I was toweling off Lydah, wiping her tears as she snuggled in my lap. After working to convince her that she could actually stop crying, that I wasn't mad anymore, and that everything was just peachy (pun intended), I said, “Lydah, is it okay if I cry now too?”

She sat straight up and looked at me and said, “No Mommy. You can't cry. Big people don't cry. Only little people can do that.” Then she hesitated and said, “Well, Daddy can cry. But not you.”

We giggled together as I pretended to boo-hoo like a Big Bad Daddy, but I think my two-year-old hit on some truth. We mothers are irreplaceable. Indestructible. Heroic. If Mommy breaks down, the very core of the household is shaken. The little ones will question the worth of their lives. Even the Daddy will be lost in this world of diapers, blankies, and washing machines.

Unemployed? Not at all. I may not have the official document to prove it, but I hold the powerful, world-shaping position of Mommy.