This might get long. You might want to get some coffee and make yourself comfortable.
I was emailing a friend who belongs to a conservative church....and Assembly of God church. The denomination I grew up in. We have been having a very open conversation about understanding human rights and discrimination. We have been listening to each other's stories. Which is all the Add the Words Campaign protesters are asking of our legislators. I am a firm believer that if we just LISTENED to each other's stories we would find we are not so different from each other and war would end.
Anyway, as I was emailing him, I realized this friend only had a very superficial view of who I was. He did not really know ME and where I came from. He did not know WHY I am standing up the way I am. And really, even though I fit into the LGBT umbrella, that is not WHY I am standing up and that is not what makes me who I am. It just just PART of who I am. I believe to REALLY know me and why I do what I do, you must go back to my 1st grade me. Because, let's face it, kids don't pull any punches and they tell you the truth as they see it..without filters...
I may have already typed this in a blog somewhere before. I mean I have been blogging for 4 years now! But please bear with me...
I was born in 1969 in Richardson, Texas. Texas isn't really the deep south. It's not really the west. If you ask a Texan, they will tell you Texas is a state of its own, and very proudly they will tell you that they are the only state that can legally secede from the union. My German ancestors immigrated to Texas before Texas was even a state. It was part of Mexico still! That should tell you 2 things. 1) I'm white. 2) My blood runs THICK in Texas and we all know how RED Texas is.
Anyway, I grew up in a very WHITE town and neighborhood. We didn't get our first people of color in our neighborhood until I was in junior high and it was quite the scandal! There were only Christians living in our neighborhood (at least as far as I knew). No one mowed their lawns on Sundays and if they did, my mom sure had a few words to say about them as we drove passed them on our way to church. As a little girl we had black (I use that term because of the times we are talking about) maids come to our home to clean every week. They called me Miss Martha. The only time you saw people of color come into our neighborhood was to clean houses. Plain and simple. And in 1st grade, the way I remember it, my school district that was all white decided to desegregate. They were going to bus the white kids from the white neighborhoods into the black neighborhoods to the black schools. They did this by bribing us with cool after school activities such as ballet, gymnastics, piano. (Now when my mom tells this story, she said, that they were just offering a new "charter" school.) I am not certain if this was their way of sugar coating what was going on or not. But as a first grader, I could see there were no black kids in my neighborhood or in my school, and the place they were sending me had NO WHITES anywhere around them! I may have only been 6 years old, but I wasn't stupid!
Anyway, I was cool with going there. Why? Because I had black maids. And one of the maid's grandsons went to this school. I knew him cause sometimes he would come with our maid and we would get to play together.
Anyway, I loved my school. It was an exciting time of seeing new faces and meeting new friends. But here is where I get to my point. I was a white Christian girl from proud German decent going to a school far from home where I was being introduced to new cultures other than my own. This is where I met my very first Jewish people. We introduced ourselves, and I am not entirely certain why religion or ethnic background came into the conversation of a couple of 6 year old white children (Talk about something that our parents banged into our heads!) But when we talked about it and I realized they were Jewish, I remember my reply as clear as it was yesterday. "I am German. You are Jewish. I am supposed to hate you. But I am also a Christian. Jesus was Jewish. I love Jesus. Jesus loved everybody. So if I can love him, and if he can love you, then I can love you too." And with that we became fast friends.
If a first grader can get passed the ignorance of discrimination. If a first grader can see to the heart of Christianity and the true teachings of Jesus. Why can't the adults of this world do the same thing? If a 1st grader can see that Love is all there is, why can't adults? If a 1st grade can see that religious views should NOT be a reason to discriminate, then why can't our law makers and the other Christians of today who are saying that protecting LGBT means that Christians will not be protected see that? I don't get it. It's so simple, even a 1st grader could see it!
Let down your walls. BREAK down your walls and let LOVE in!
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