I had a nightmare last night. I basically always have either nightmares or, in recent years, lucid dreams. To me dreams are important. I see them as messages, either from the subconscious or somewhere else, a higher power. I suppose it depends on the dream, as to where I think it originated. This one, I see as a message from my subconscious, or a way of processing feelings. Angry feelings, hurt feelings. I'll give you the dream and my interpretation of it, but I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on the meaning of it all. Dream interpretation is of great interest to me. I even see my fiction writing as conscious dreaming, and I find meaning in my work quite often that I hadn't known was there.
So here's the dream:
I was an investigative reporter for a TV station, and I was doing a story on preachers abusing animals. It started with one preacher, at home, who I was visiting as a friend, not as a reporter. It was Christmas morning. His wife gave him a puppy for Christmas, wrapped in a box. The preacher unwrapped the present, opened the box, and pulled out the puppy (which was female - any detail could have significance) with sheer delight. His wife got on the phone to a friend, and was talking animatedly about what a wonderful Christmas they were having, when to her shock and dismay, her husband proceeded to "lovingly" rape the puppy. The preacher's wife tried to get him to stop, but she didn't end her phone conversation, nor did she let on to the person on the other end that anything was less than wonderful, as her husband continued his violation of the innocent puppy.
I was so upset! I left, because I'd just been there as a friend, and now I was fairly certain I couldn't be friends with this guy anymore. His wife couldn't stop him, I couldn't stop him, and the puppy was raped and nothing could be done about it. Then I got a call from my boss at the TV station, and that's when I learned this was an epidemic, and I was to do a story on preachers raping animals. I didn't want to do the story; I wanted to run from it, but it was my job, so I went with my camera man to a park that was reportedly where preachers gathered to do their unspeakable crimes.
It looked like a zoo, with artificial animal environments, and all manner of animals. And there were lots of preachers there, in the buff, doing their thing with the animals. And, like the preacher from the first part of the dream, they were all profoundly fat, had thick mustaches, and puffed up, slicked back hair. The hair was a variety of colors, depending on the preachers, black, silver, red, blonde, brown, but they were otherwise identical. Now that I think of it, they all looked sort of like Ron Jeremy. Yeesh. It was SO disgusting that I had to struggle not to vomit, but I mustered my strength and did the reporting. When my camera man and I got to the pool, where two preachers were trying to have their way with a visibly excited male walrus, however, I almost did lose my lunch. It was all I could do to wrap up the story and sign off, as the police arrived and started dragging the preachers away in handcuffs and white towels.
And then I woke up, and I still felt like throwing up for several minutes. It was really disturbing!
My interpretation, so far:
I am angry at the Church. I am disillusioned. I've been struggling with this for some time now, as a youth worker in the Church. I see so much hypocrisy, especially working at the conference level, where I see the politics of the larger machine at its best and worst on a scale of hundreds of churches. It seems like everyone has forgotten what we're doing here. And I say that very generally. I know several sincere and faithful clergy members and other church folks who for me represent the genuine article in Christianity. Unfortunately, they are not the ones with the most power, they are the ones who get marginalized by the greed of the machine that the Church has in many ways become.
Here are some more specific things: I see churches seeking money, money, and more money. Money for the sake of money. They cut youth and children's programs, or at the very least short change them, because young people don't tithe. They do nothing for the college age group. They even discourage anything to be done for this age group when someone tries on a volunteer basis...because it doesn't bring money into the church. "The church is a business," they say, "and the senior pastor is the CEO." This is the most oft repeated cop out of my experience. Frankly, trying to run the Church like a business is killing it. Yes, money keeps the lights on and the salaries paid, but to what end, if all the church is doing is seeking new ways to bring in money? I fully believe that if a church actually behaves like the body of Christ, as it's supposed to, the money will be there. I say if we put our faith in God, rather than in money, we'll make it. We'll have what we need to do our work, our mission, our ministry. Instead, I feel like the Church is raping the masses so that a select group of people can hold onto their illusions of power and their bloated salaries. It's not at all unlike what is happening with the United States Congress even as I write this. Sometimes, ironically, I feel like my primary job as a Christian youth leader is to protect the youth from the Church and foster their relationships with God and encourage their spirituality in spite of the Church.
And this isn't just a local Church thing, this isn't just one denomination, this is across the board. There are lots of good people in almost every Church, lots of good clergy that I know personally, but the money-and-numbers trend that Churches across the board seem to be following is the same. I say, if it comes down to cutting a ministry or mission, or losing the building, lose the building! It's the 21st century; we don't need a building in order to do God's work. If you look at Jesus for inspiration, you'll see they didn't even need a church building in the first century. Our priorities are all jacked up.
I found myself the other day having a conversation with someone about this, and I realized it seems, in contrast to the protestants, the Roman Catholics aren't putting money first. Their people in power just enable child rapists and wage war on women. Again, every Catholic that I know personally is a good person with genuinely Christian ethics; I am speaking in general of the powers that be, but come on; what is wrong with the Church in general? How can things have degenerated to such an insane degree?
So that anger, that outrage, I'm pretty darn sure, is where the dream originated. And I could go on about the hypocrisies I see. I haven't even touched on ilegal, money-saving business practices, racism, ageism, sexism, and homophobia, but for now I want to focus on the details of the dream.
The mustaches - I think the mustaches represented hiding their true faces. The Church pretends to be benign and all about the people and connecting them with God, but behind the proverbial "mustaches" they are becoming just another giant, powerful organization trying to take the people for all their worth. "Rapists of the innocent."
Fat - All the preachers were fat, and I think this is because I think so many preachers, and the Church itself, are bloated, glutting themselves on power and money.
Male - All the preachers were male. I think this is because of the whole "rape" theme. I personally don't automatically think of rapists as female, probably because I rarely hear of females raping people. Not that it doesn't happen.
Ron Jeremy - is gross. I think the way some Churches abuse and take advantage of faith and innocence is equally gross. Both make me want to throw up.
Animals - are innocent, like people who put their faith blindly in the Church as Christ's representative.
The preacher's wife - was ignoring the problem, but she was fully aware of it and trying not to let on to the person on the other end of the phone. Isn't this just like us? Are Christians not all, on some level, married to, or in partnership with, the Church? Do not all of us who are deeply involved with the Church see the hypocrisy? Do we not all try to get on with business as usual, as though nothing is wrong? I think we do. I think it's the easy answer. And I think it's the wrong answer.
So, to wrap this blog up, I want to say again that I know so many good Christians, so many good clergy people, in every denomination and in every Church that I have ever been involved with. Good missions and excellent ministries are all around us. But that's not what I was dreaming about. My subconscious isn't having trouble coping with the good parts of the Church.
I feel that it is our duty, those of us who want better from the Church, to be the change, to stand up to the bullies and thugs who would have us worship money and their power. Don't let them win, and the Church will again be the Church: an organization whose business is the feeding of God's flock, the nurturing of faith and human relationships.
Let us not forget: Jesus was ultimately betrayed by Judas, and Judas was the keeper of the common purse. He traded Jesus' ministry for thirty pieces of silver. We mustn't allow our leaders in the Church to do the same.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Monday, October 31, 2011
I'm listening to Depeche Mode right now. Why? Because I'm copying my old CDs into my iTunes library. Things change. I remember when cassette tapes were the newest thing, and then we got CDs.
I also remember growing up in the 70s and 80s, and what the atmosphere was like, racially. I remember being white and being automatically despised for it by strangers of other ethnicities, because it was assumed that I was privileged; that I thought I was better than them. Well, I was privileged because of my ethnicity...I just didn't know it at the time. I didn't have a concept of it. I didn't understand why they thought they were getting the short end of the stick. Didn't they have all the same rights as I did? Well, they did by that time...technically.
Reality was another story, though. I remember coming to the realization of how unfair it all was. I remember when I was old enough to be horrified by the "N word." I remember hearing my grandparents use it, and they meant it too. I remember teachers treating people differently because of their race. As children, we always knew which teachers hated Asians, which ones hated black people, which ones hates Hispanics ("Mexicans"), and which ones hated white people. I had a black teacher when I was in the fourth grade who actually kept a phony grade book to prove that all the white boys were failing and not doing their homework. Any time we turned in well-written papers, she would give us zeroes, with a note in red ink on the top of the paper: "Who wrote this?" Most of the other white boys in her class had to go through the humiliation of standing in front of the class in tears, after telling their parents what was really going on, and telling the class "I'm sorry for lying about Miss Conway." I remember watching one sobbing boy in particular, when I was going through the same issue myself, and seeing my own none-too-distant fate with dread. Fortunately, my parents believed me. They pulled me out of that school early, when my father got transferred, and I moved back to Dallas with him before the rest of my family joined us.
It was a very strange thing for me, realizing what racism was, and that usually the situation was reversed. Usually, it was hateful white people who went out of their way to hurt races they felt negatively about. I remember feeling angry about it, even as a child. I remember teachers and other adults in my world getting frustrated with me, disgusted with me, because I wouldn't cooperate when they asked me to treat someone badly because they were different. I remember the realization that it was all true; that white people really did think they were better than everyone else, and I remember hating myself for being one of them.
I had friends of all races growing up in public schools in the '70s and '80s. It wasn't my grandparents' world anymore. It wasn't even my parents' world, which saw the first days of Integration. For my generation, Integration was a thing of the past. We couldn't imagine "separate but equal" facilities. It seemed insane to us. By the '90s, when I was in high school, for us racism really seemed to have vanished. It was an issue our parents and grandparents struggled with, but we didn't really grasp. There were isolated incidents, but for the most part, the teenagers I knew in the '90s didn't see people "in color." We just saw people; friends and adversaries not because of what they were, but who they were.
Today, however, it seems all of the racism I may have naively thought was gone in the '90s, has returned in full force--ugly, and nastier than anything I've seen since my bad experience in the fourth grade. Racism is louder around me at this point in my life than it ever was in the '70s, when true equality was still a fairly new concept.
I keep this in mind in my writing. My writing is, after all, most concerned with equality and the power of diversity. That's why, sometimes, I have a very hard time writing certain characters, certain attitudes.
My serial novel, The Chronicles of Nightfire, Texas, has just begun a re-release in various e-book formats. When I was reading over the text of the previous release, making some polishes, I was very tempted to remove the "N word," because it makes me cringe. It made me cringe when I wrote it into the dialogue for the original publication. It made me cringe all the more, because the characters used the word so casually. But that was my experience in the '70s. It was all around me. Casual racism. Casual hatred. Most people didn't even realize that they were being hateful; that they were, despite any protestations they may have to the label, being racist.
The casual racism I witnessed in the 1970s has become a central theme in The Chronicles of Nightfire, Texas. As I've continued writing the series over the years, the theme has escalated. I've had Sam struggle with being labeled an "Uncle Tom" by his family and his girlfriend; I've put him in situations that have shown him that not all white people are as accepting as his friends. He's been refused by white cashiers, he's come face to face with the fact that one of his white friends' family used to own his family. He's experienced both sides of the issue. I've done my best in the series to show what I saw happening, from a white perspective, and I used to think I was writing about irrelevant issues. I was heartbroken to realize, as I made the decision to leave the "N word" grotesquely present for the re-release, that this particular issue had become profoundly relevant once again.
It's hard for me to write a lot of what is said in the series, because I am so against it, but I feel I must show my readers what casual racism looks like to me, and what I see as the consequences. The third story arch in The Chronicles of Nightfire, Texas that I'm preparing to write is set to be titled "White Devils." I'm bringing the issue to a head.
Now don't hear me saying that there's anything wrong with being white. There isn't. While I went through a period of hating my own race as a child, I was eventually able to separate race from attitude. Stereotypes are just as hateful as slurs, and Caucasians are no strangers to being victimized by stereotypes. White privilege, however, is very real; it's the way the United States of America is set up, it's the filter through which everything seems to pass, and it is wrong. It is something our society needs to correct, and no amount of hatred on either side of the issue is ever going to solve the problem. Somehow, someday, "equal" needs to really mean equal.
But as I said, there is nothing wrong with being Caucasian. It's okay to be proud of your heritage. It's right to love one's self. We can't truly love others if we don't. The danger comes when anyone loves themselves and their own heritage so much that they begin to believe it superior to the heritage of others. It is wrong to ignore this problem in one's own race. We can't ignore all the people who see "white privilege" as a good thing, as a birth right, and neither can we ignore Miss Conway. The hatred has to stop on all sides. If it is allowed to survive anywhere at all, it will grow back, like a cancer; like it has in recent years.
I honestly see racism at the root of our nation's political leaders' refusal to resolve any pressing issues in recent years. The economy is in chaos, jobs are scarce, and all that so many politicians seem to cry out against are non-issues, like the race of the president who presents a workable solution. No no, we can't let him take any credit for fixing any of the problems. Better to let them escalate until one of us is in office. It goes far beyond the age old Republicans vs. Democrats sort of gridlock we've faced in Congress before. Like all blind hatred, it is insidious. It threatens to destroy us all.
It sickens me.
I also remember growing up in the 70s and 80s, and what the atmosphere was like, racially. I remember being white and being automatically despised for it by strangers of other ethnicities, because it was assumed that I was privileged; that I thought I was better than them. Well, I was privileged because of my ethnicity...I just didn't know it at the time. I didn't have a concept of it. I didn't understand why they thought they were getting the short end of the stick. Didn't they have all the same rights as I did? Well, they did by that time...technically.
Reality was another story, though. I remember coming to the realization of how unfair it all was. I remember when I was old enough to be horrified by the "N word." I remember hearing my grandparents use it, and they meant it too. I remember teachers treating people differently because of their race. As children, we always knew which teachers hated Asians, which ones hated black people, which ones hates Hispanics ("Mexicans"), and which ones hated white people. I had a black teacher when I was in the fourth grade who actually kept a phony grade book to prove that all the white boys were failing and not doing their homework. Any time we turned in well-written papers, she would give us zeroes, with a note in red ink on the top of the paper: "Who wrote this?" Most of the other white boys in her class had to go through the humiliation of standing in front of the class in tears, after telling their parents what was really going on, and telling the class "I'm sorry for lying about Miss Conway." I remember watching one sobbing boy in particular, when I was going through the same issue myself, and seeing my own none-too-distant fate with dread. Fortunately, my parents believed me. They pulled me out of that school early, when my father got transferred, and I moved back to Dallas with him before the rest of my family joined us.
It was a very strange thing for me, realizing what racism was, and that usually the situation was reversed. Usually, it was hateful white people who went out of their way to hurt races they felt negatively about. I remember feeling angry about it, even as a child. I remember teachers and other adults in my world getting frustrated with me, disgusted with me, because I wouldn't cooperate when they asked me to treat someone badly because they were different. I remember the realization that it was all true; that white people really did think they were better than everyone else, and I remember hating myself for being one of them.
I had friends of all races growing up in public schools in the '70s and '80s. It wasn't my grandparents' world anymore. It wasn't even my parents' world, which saw the first days of Integration. For my generation, Integration was a thing of the past. We couldn't imagine "separate but equal" facilities. It seemed insane to us. By the '90s, when I was in high school, for us racism really seemed to have vanished. It was an issue our parents and grandparents struggled with, but we didn't really grasp. There were isolated incidents, but for the most part, the teenagers I knew in the '90s didn't see people "in color." We just saw people; friends and adversaries not because of what they were, but who they were.
Today, however, it seems all of the racism I may have naively thought was gone in the '90s, has returned in full force--ugly, and nastier than anything I've seen since my bad experience in the fourth grade. Racism is louder around me at this point in my life than it ever was in the '70s, when true equality was still a fairly new concept.
I keep this in mind in my writing. My writing is, after all, most concerned with equality and the power of diversity. That's why, sometimes, I have a very hard time writing certain characters, certain attitudes.
My serial novel, The Chronicles of Nightfire, Texas, has just begun a re-release in various e-book formats. When I was reading over the text of the previous release, making some polishes, I was very tempted to remove the "N word," because it makes me cringe. It made me cringe when I wrote it into the dialogue for the original publication. It made me cringe all the more, because the characters used the word so casually. But that was my experience in the '70s. It was all around me. Casual racism. Casual hatred. Most people didn't even realize that they were being hateful; that they were, despite any protestations they may have to the label, being racist.
The casual racism I witnessed in the 1970s has become a central theme in The Chronicles of Nightfire, Texas. As I've continued writing the series over the years, the theme has escalated. I've had Sam struggle with being labeled an "Uncle Tom" by his family and his girlfriend; I've put him in situations that have shown him that not all white people are as accepting as his friends. He's been refused by white cashiers, he's come face to face with the fact that one of his white friends' family used to own his family. He's experienced both sides of the issue. I've done my best in the series to show what I saw happening, from a white perspective, and I used to think I was writing about irrelevant issues. I was heartbroken to realize, as I made the decision to leave the "N word" grotesquely present for the re-release, that this particular issue had become profoundly relevant once again.
It's hard for me to write a lot of what is said in the series, because I am so against it, but I feel I must show my readers what casual racism looks like to me, and what I see as the consequences. The third story arch in The Chronicles of Nightfire, Texas that I'm preparing to write is set to be titled "White Devils." I'm bringing the issue to a head.
Now don't hear me saying that there's anything wrong with being white. There isn't. While I went through a period of hating my own race as a child, I was eventually able to separate race from attitude. Stereotypes are just as hateful as slurs, and Caucasians are no strangers to being victimized by stereotypes. White privilege, however, is very real; it's the way the United States of America is set up, it's the filter through which everything seems to pass, and it is wrong. It is something our society needs to correct, and no amount of hatred on either side of the issue is ever going to solve the problem. Somehow, someday, "equal" needs to really mean equal.
But as I said, there is nothing wrong with being Caucasian. It's okay to be proud of your heritage. It's right to love one's self. We can't truly love others if we don't. The danger comes when anyone loves themselves and their own heritage so much that they begin to believe it superior to the heritage of others. It is wrong to ignore this problem in one's own race. We can't ignore all the people who see "white privilege" as a good thing, as a birth right, and neither can we ignore Miss Conway. The hatred has to stop on all sides. If it is allowed to survive anywhere at all, it will grow back, like a cancer; like it has in recent years.
I honestly see racism at the root of our nation's political leaders' refusal to resolve any pressing issues in recent years. The economy is in chaos, jobs are scarce, and all that so many politicians seem to cry out against are non-issues, like the race of the president who presents a workable solution. No no, we can't let him take any credit for fixing any of the problems. Better to let them escalate until one of us is in office. It goes far beyond the age old Republicans vs. Democrats sort of gridlock we've faced in Congress before. Like all blind hatred, it is insidious. It threatens to destroy us all.
It sickens me.
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