It's Thanksgiving - call your mom
And on this day, let's all give thanks for our moms. I just got off the phone with mine - she's back in Michigan heading over to my sister's place with a batch of baked goodies. She's 65 this year, and like every woman of a certain age, she has certain opinions. Today, she imparted this:
"George Bush is a Christian like my asshole is gold."
I love my mom. I don't think even Quentin Tarantino could have come up with that. Thirty years on a Detroit assembly line plus several years driving a cab gives one a certain edge, and my mom's is still sharp as it ever was.
My mom's life has been a winding spiritual journey the equal of any Beatle, just without the drugs. Her path has taken her to a point today where she is both a devoted Christian and an unapologetic critic of Christian Evangelicals. Today, by and large, she's a nondenominational Catholic, if there can be such a thing. She goes to Catholic mass, but feels no allegiance to the Church as a political entity. She also accompanies her more evangelical friends to a (I think) Pentacostal Church on occasion, where she more often than not leaves a little exasperated.
But the state of my country aside, I've much to be thankful for:
My mom's life has been a winding spiritual journey the equal of any Beatle, just without the drugs. Her path has taken her to a point today where she is both a devoted Christian and an unapologetic critic of Christian Evangelicals. Today, by and large, she's a nondenominational Catholic, if there can be such a thing. She goes to Catholic mass, but feels no allegiance to the Church as a political entity. She also accompanies her more evangelical friends to a (I think) Pentacostal Church on occasion, where she more often than not leaves a little exasperated.
"Jason!" she told me today. "They live in their own world... This one lady today said she won't watch the news or read any non-evangelical papers because we [Christians] aren't really of this world, and I said, 'Listen, as long a I breathe, I am of this world. Cutting yourself off and not reading the news doesn't make you more like Jesus.'" And then, "Can you believe they pray for Bush just because he's a supposedly a Christian? People are dying, and they say it's God's army."Two exasperated pacifists, reaching out from far-away blue states and trying to feel thankful across a sea of red.
And I said, "The isolation is just cowardice - American ignorance and fear, a constantly reinforced sense of religious victimhood."
"They do! They're always 'under assault,' and 'at war.'"
But the state of my country aside, I've much to be thankful for:
- my life
- Simba
- my friends
- my family
- my talents
- my faults
- my health
- my warm bed
- my broadband :-)
- the Internet
- California
- scalable vector graphics
- my music
- Europe
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