Having The Blues in A Red State

s. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Living in the Midwest when you're a committed liberal has it down side. The down side is making

 friends when the majority of your co workers and neighbors believe the opposite of what you believe. Even finding a church can be a major obstacle. I live in a rural area when the closet Unitarian congregation is more than an hour drive. I live in an area where the ration of Democrats to Republican is four to one. Still there are advantages; I hope I can give the locals the opportunity to understand that I do not secretly have horns under my short little do. Still I find myself explaining; to public school teacher why my children do not reject evolution or want to debate a women's right to choose. These are situations that I never intended to face when I chose to live in the Midwest.

My survival guide is pretty simple. Someone the other day mentioned Meet Up. This is a great site to discover your local closeted liberals. You may find an enclave of like minded liberals is gathering monthly at the local library to discuss the dreaded taboos such as gay marriage. Another get source of potential friends and political colleagues is email lists. Yahoo groups come in every flavor of lifestyle and belief system. Who knows your neighbor may be a card carrying member of the ACLU. Don't be hesitant to use the privacy of your home computer to find like minded folk.

The other way I have found to survive life in the cornfields is to look to the local community college. Youth have a way of being more open minded than most other groups. In one conservative community I was able to involve my boys in envelop stuffing for a local NAREL group at the local liberal arts school. It was an opportunity for my high school age boy to understand there were people close to his age that shared his values.

Taking classes in low cost continuing education programs at these schools may or attending guest lectures are another way for you to connect with those who share your intellectual interests. Your experience in the conservative communities does not need to be that of an intellectual waste land. Supporting your local adult theatre groups or art associations, even if you yourself are not an artisan, are a good way to connect and support a better overall cultural environment.

I created the graph myself with data from a Pew Research Center study, taken from here. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I admit I am not likely to accept my landlord's invitation to bible study in hopes of finding someone to have coffee with. Still it is hard because a large percentage of socializing in my community take place within the local church groups. A number of youth activities also only take place within the local churches. There is simply not a large amount of inexpensive activities for teenagers in our town. I am going to try a little experiment. I hope that our local mainstream protestant and sign my youngest up for the local youth group. I feel the worse that could happen is that he learn a tolerance for those who think differently than his family. In the end as a true liberal I want my children to come to their own moral conclusions and political beliefs. The funny thing is that old cliché about the off spring of liberals becoming Young Republicans is not true. Our children really do end up reflecting and hopefully personally refining the values we teach them.

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The Matter of Lingering Loss of Love

Representing the famous balcony scene from romeo and juliet. 1884 painting by Jose Oscar Garcia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Promotional image (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am addressing this blog as a matter of recovery tips for people who have experienced the loss of love. The loss of love runs the gamut. It can be the loss of a lover through an unwanted breakup, leaving a lover for good reason including abuse, or loss of a lover thru death or disability.

The manner of loss matters some to the recovery process. The loss of a lover as a matter of an unwanted breakup is common. It can be especially incline us to self doubt. We tie so much of ourselves into those we truly love that finding ourselves rejected makes us question our overall worth. For many this is a process of grieving, reevaluating, claiming healthier ways of having relationships. Even if we are clever enough to avoid the pit falls of co-decency, no true relationship has depth unless we develop some sometimes unhealthy attachments.

English: Robert Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So instead of questioning your self worth celebrate the fact you will were bold enough to risk it all and engage another in your inner most self. Know you made a difference in their life journey. You were a lesson learned. It may hurt like hell, but when you unconditionally love someone the giving of yourself should never be regretted.

When we leave a relationship because we are abused or we she ourselves becoming abusive the pain of leaving is bitter and sweet. There is the relief that we are doing the healthy thing, but the bitterness of questioning the legitimacy of the love we were giving and taking. For many women this is a necessary step to leave, but does it mean the love of was of no value? All love has positive value in the world even when soiled with abuse. Again the abused are many times the ones who became ultimately altruistic to save a love that once one or in hope of loves triumph.

We can only be healthy if we take care of ourselves in the end. You decision to love in abuse was not wrong, it just was. It stands alone in reference to your heart and it can coincides with great hated and resentment of the abuse. Claim both. You will not be consumed by something that is initially marked by love, if you know the abusive relationship was at least conceived in love. You ability to forgive and move on may not ever be complete, but you will not be consumed by an abusive past.

If you were the abuser and you left congratulate yourself. You let your love of the person over come your tendency to the dysfunctional dance of abuse. You have hope of change and you gave the greatest gift of all to your partner. You gave them a safer place to be in the world they did not have the courage to give themselves.

Loss of love due to death or disability is in a way easier for couples to deal with. We can mourn the loss of the essential self of a lover to mental decline in old age knowing that the person exists in the mind and the body is but the vessel. Spirit is beyond dementia, and in some place in the behind blank eyes the truth of their love for us lives.

Loss of physical love due to disability can be dealt with. To wholly love someone we adore their intellect and humor. Sex is mostly a brain thing as we age. We get there because we remember the smooth skin of our lover’s youth.

Death is ultimate and many who have been together for many years seek to not try because the essential selves is so wrapped up with that of the lost lover. Still, if we have youth and obligations we need to find a way forward. Most will find a way forward when they realize their pain is their pain, and not the pain of the one who passed. The one who passed is not longer in pain. In the spirit of truth to our passed love, it is better to celebrate their escape from pain , then to mourn our own selfish loss forever.

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Musings on An American Thanksgiving:

Still the Shining City Upon the Hill

Source: Jennie Augusta Brownscombe [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

More Than Contruction Paper Pilgram Hats

Those of us who get past our 4^th grade rendition of the first thanksgiving dressed as Native Americans or Pilgrims may actually wonder about what are we actually reenacting at our dinner tables every November. Native Americans , like all peoples who subsidence farm, had harvest festivals that gave thanks for the bounty of the earth. The Spaniards, who settled in areas of Texas observed community feasts. They did this long before Squanto helped any Englishmen inspired by Calvin plant corn.

Striving for simple Hearth and Home

They were thankful for the bounty of the land, unlike some of their countryman.Spaniards determined to settle and make a life of hearth and home in a new land. They were thankful for the bounty that made the trip worth it.

Thanksgiving may be a national holiday, that in the end was a 19^th century remembrance, of many community meals. A centuries old from a time when life on this continent could not be lived by men and the individual households., Life had to be lived in tight, sometimes forted ,communities. Places we people worked for many a generations; to create places of potential bounty and relative security. The kind of places, that those denied a better life at home, moved .They ran to a life of hardship, disease, and death for a few seasons. One season finally these men and women created a place individual families could survive and prosper.

Our Quiet Quest

It did not matter if it was a quest for personal adventure, freedom, or greed. These immigrants left it all behind and were moved sheer circumstance to the New World. From the first Native Americans crossing the Bering Straits, Irish coming on ships from dirty hovels, to the Hispanics crossing dangerous deserts to come to the Unitized States ;we went blindly onward. Even those humans, stolen from the shores of Africa, became something magnificent .The quest of freedom is something, we collectively seek. The Americans are a new, diverse, and imperfect ,but progressive people. It is a glorious fact we all can be thankful for.

We created a space where men and women can better their lot. Common folk were not driven to become the tycoons of high Victorian capitalist lore We came driven to overcome horrendous difficult for the joy of simple and secure homes. Our ancestors were driven to live little dreams of farms, shops, and schools. Dreams that incrementally lead to vibrant cities, the ability to feed the world, and to retrieve rocks from Mars.

Irish Immigrants about 1910 Kansas City

Source: Jennie Augusta Brownscombe [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Cloud of little Dreams

It is in these little dreams of ourselves and our ancestors that we sow the seeds of great things. Yes, we are a confused people, self absorbed, overly religious, and massively consuming. But we are survivors and the products of survivors, We are story tellers of the great wit, painters with the boldest strokes, and saints willing to save the world. We are the best and the worst of the world.We are the story of the world and the fruit of it’s collective best.

All from the little dreams and wish for modest survival on little farms and homes. Heirs of our humble ancestors, and the bounty of yes, even their enslaved labor. For this as the world’s most undue and enterprising people we akin are grateful. It is not the bounty of God’s farm harvest we celebrate, but the enduring glorious imperfect soul of Americans past and present...

The Cloud of Little American Dreams

Source: Flip Schulke, 1930-2008, Photographer (NARA record: 2435383)

Thankful to Be Still The Only Shining City Upon the Hill

There are some that would argue that our thanks are for an America past. A past of great political means. They believe greatness was created when the masses believed that we were the shining city up on the hill. When we were the political Zion for the world. That all of our wealth and radical individualism has created a weak unfocused people..Americans who will fade into history.They say we are a people who have lost sight of our manifest destiny. However, such ideas are far from any current or foreseeable truth.

We are a people. We are a defined people. We share values that the world envies and despises.They do so in a collective breath. We are the people who always move forward . We make pilgrims progress towards justice, prosperity, and hope. It does not matter if your individual politic is leftist, conservative, or ambivalent. You are part of this movement.

It does not matter if wealth, religion, or desire for common familial love motivates us. We are blessed to have the ability to be the greatest blessing to the whole of God’s known creation.

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Seeking Personal Justice

English: A metaphorical visualization of the word Anger. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anyone who knows me knows I have a simmering anger issue that I have struggled to get a handle 

English: Victimization has been described as an invasion into the self of the victim - with an allegory that a person is like an onion, victimization is like a needle or sword penetrating the system, at times to the core. Illustration by Ologe Iyinoluwa. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

on. Anyone who knows me also knows the 'advice' I usually get involves 'forgive the other person and move on'. The problem with this is that even in forgiving the other person I am still the victim. Forgiveness implies that two people did a wrong to each other and one should be the bigger person in the situation and let the incident go. They should not become a victim of themselves by being angry. Forgiveness on a level playing field is a fine and noble thing. Yet, I have be victimized by people whom I loved and trusted not to victimize me. It was not a level playing field and I can only stop being a victim if I preserve my right to call a spade a spade.

Exploitation is not just a forgivable act because people who have a pattern of victimizing people by exploitation do so out of an excessive sense of entitlement. Unless you stop letting them victimize you then you become part of the problem. You keep the knowledge and the anger to yourself. Then end result means you stand idle while the victimizer sets up the next victim. Knowledge is power and sharing the knowledge of your own victimization can possibly spare the next person. Sharing the knowledge will most likely not get you the justice you seek. Women who are victims of sexual exploitation tend to ooze a submissive nature that allows them to not only continue to be victims but to also be victimize by a social system that has little interest in protecting them. We live in blame the victim society. Still in order not to be consumed by anger and then risk becoming victimizers are selves we need to seek justice even if we are denied it. This is especially true in the case of sexual exploitation.

It is almost cliché to note that the most aggressive people who sexually exploit others were victims themselves. There anger is projected at exploiting others and victimizing them as a way of seeking peace. It is as if by becoming the abuser they can give up the anger at being abused. . I for one do not want to be this person in the end so I am directing my anger towards the people who victimized me. I will tell my story to all that will listen. I will try to make them accountable for victimizing me even if it is a round about way. I will not go sit quietly in the corner . I will not just arbitrarily forgive. I will not longer be a victim.

There is a fine line between revenge and seeking personal justice. I may cross it at times. Yet I am a person of worth who had the right not to be victimized and exploited by people who said they loved me. I have a right to seek justice even if I attain little in actuality. I am not sitting in the corner waiting for the next victimizer to come along and exploit the little self worth I have left. I am not contributing to their next act exploitation by sitting silent. If in the end there is not a grain a justice attained at least I tried and that is my first step of freeing myself from the cycle of abuse.

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Is Society Ready For GLBT Marriage Issues?

English: This protester was on his own and letting Minnesota state Senators know his position on gay marriage. This is freedom of speech in action. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Map showing the legal recognition of same-sex relationships in the United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Crowd in support of Gay Marriage (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We all can have a dichotomy between issue we support politically and our personal view point. This is certainly true in my view of gay marriage. Go out on the Internet and you can find all the argument pro and con based on view points of civil rights and fear of what gay marriage will mean to society at large.

I support Gay marriage. I have had long term lesbian relationships. I have had a civil union ceremony. My view point has always been we should not be institutionalizing the bastardization of the children brought up in gay unions.

Having said this; my personal viewpoints have changed somewhat over the years because of my personal experience. It is simply this. So many GLBT people enter adulthood scarred because of institutionalized bigotry. Many have lost their families, friends, and job even when they have come out. Their lives even today in a more progressive world live always in the fear of to tell or not to tell. Those of us who live in the conservative Midwest face discrimination on a daily basis; at work, school , and in church communities. Given this few of us in my experience; end capable of productive long term relationships. Simply, gay marriage is not for me or many people I know. We are haunted with our own issues of acceptance or sexual identity and cannot really have successful traditional long term relationships.

Thing is it is not our fault. Heterosexuals with a sky rocketing divorce rates fall short in honoring the tradition of marriage as well. They are scarred by the remnants of the social upheavals of the sixties and changing social mores' leave monogamy pretty much as a dead value;for a large percentage of the population. I, guess I fear our courts will now be overwhelmed with divorces and custody battles from another ten percent of the GLBT population. In some ways our society is not ready for an onslaught from another corner of the "I cannot honor commitment” part of the population.

Still we need equality more then we need to have our courts not overwhelmed with a whole new group of people engaged in nasty divorces. This is the only step that would help produce a GLBT community that is really ready to honor marriage by producing people with the integrity to stay in committed relationships. It is a step we need for our community to heal and to grow up. A generation of GLBT people who do not feel like secondary citizens will be ready to honor properly the institution of marriage.

Sometimes social progress causes additional social problems. Men learned it was ok not to take responsibility for their children when the feminist movement spread the message "We don't need a man to have a child." The message should have been "We need to be equal partners with men to raise properly a child." It got lost somewhere in the social turmoil of the movement and now we are paying a huge price is some many homes where the father is just missing. The ramifications caused a new and in someway bigger social issue. Sometime in social evolution is just is two steps forward and three steps back.

The solution is and will come in new social constructs that look beyond race, gender and sexual orientation and teach people that they should want and are obligated to society to be productive adults who is they are able bring up children in stability. We will get this new message across, but it will take time. Bible banging the public at large with outdated and disprove social theories will do nothing to stop the tragedy of divorce or single parent household regardless if they are heterosexual or homosexual. We need morality taught out of a completely different social construct. I have no idea what it will be , but like racism , a new viewpoint that becomes wide spread in it's acceptance will in the end define marriage for everyone in terms that better serve our society.

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