The Emancipation Proclamation was a band aid. A necessary band
aid. It did the right thing and freed the slaves, but it didn’t stop the
bleeding for long. The Civil Rights Act
was a band aid. It allowed many freedoms that should have been self-evident to
the dominant culture, but it didn’t stop the bleeding. The Indian Rights Act was a band aid acknowledged
some of the wrongs we did but it didn’t stop us from breaking our treaties. You
can’t stop the bleeding for long when you put a band aid over a flesh-eating
wound. And that is what America has, a gaping, oozing, spreading, flesh eating
wound. We didn’t stop the infection that
is racism in our blood and our soul from eating America away. We still believe the lie we were told in the
in the 1920’s during the dust bowl, that people, other than whites were taking
the jobs when, in reality, the jobs and farms were taken by corrupt industrialists
and poor farming practices. Things
obviously we didn’t learn from because we are still doing them today. We love our conveniences, but we don’t look
at them and say guess what, they’re great but they are making me loose my
job.
The boogeyman is fear, lies and inuendo that reaches into
our very own hearts that tell us there is not enough, and that we are not
enough. It is a lie perpetuated in our
government and in our churches. God
loves you but you’re not good enough even though he made you. It is lie perpetuated to keep you going back
and putting money in the plate. The lie
of social inadequacy is there everyday in the media. You aren’t thin enough, rich enough, smart
enough. I read about Kelly Catlin, an Olympic
bike champion, who committed suicide.
The main point of the article, that though she was super smart, and
super athletic, and super driven. She never could be good enough. All she ever
wanted was to be hugged and loved, as she was. She strove to the best and when
she got there, she discovered she still didn’t know what the best was because
it wasn’t good enough to give her, her father’s love. She chose suicide. Many people do now days. They can’t meet the impossible
standards. Others choose to blame people
who don’t look and act like themselves and are encouraged by the dominant
culture to do so because like them, they too, don’t feel good enough and they
choose violence and murder.
People who feel secure and adequate don’t have to blame
others for their problems. They do something
that those who choose violence against themselves and others don’t do. They look inward. They say, I can change
this. I can change myself. They dig out the awful, putrid, dying flesh
of the flesh and soul eating wound and they don’t say, I’m incapable of doing
it because I can’t. God doesn’t say that
we are incapable of change. If Christ
had said to the lame man,” stand up and walk”, and he didn’t he would not have
been healed because he wouldn’t have known he’d been healed. Faith requires some sort of action. Change requires action. Not relying on government, or the minister or
God to just do it for us. We must do
some kind of action. That action now to
stem the movement of this social scourge is to look into our own souls and find
the answers and act on them in a manner that helps, not hurts others. It means we must take responsibility for
being ourselves and for standing up against racism and corruption by not believing
the lies we are being told. America, we
as individual Americans are responsible for this. Gun laws are needed but they will only put a band
aid over a stinking, virulent wound.
Stop asking someone else to do it for you. Let peace begin with me.
