Before Katrina kit, I heard a priest say at church, "America doesn't have hurricanes and earthquakes and that's because I believe that God blesses America because we're so generous."
That's a direct quote because I wrote it down. I bring a pad and pencil to church. I give it to my youngest kid to doodle on when she loses interest. I snatch it back from her when I lose mine, or feel like I could've added something extra to the homily.
But in this case, I hadn't lost interest. I perked up. The priest continued, "Ohio is blessed with no real bad weather because we're extra generous."
Yes, we give. But to attribute our charity as some kind of insurance policy against storms...to say you can pay off God's wrath so that it is redircted to the poor? I wrote, "Americans are generous...with self-praise and extra helpings."
Remember when we used to hear that song "Proud to be an American" every other minute? It’s an okay song if it comes as a little topping to your pride, but not the cake itself. Think about it, if you're a dancer or gymnast or painter, you don't go around singing a song about it. You simply let your pride show in the performance of your craft. I think it's okay at some conventions to hear an Irish drinking song version of "I'm proud to be a welder" or a "seamstress" or an "upholsterer," or a "plumber" but the real proof of that pride is being conscientious in welding spots, sewing seams, recovering a couch, or unclogging a toilet.
If you're proud to be an American, before the singing (or crowing) starts, you show it by making the extra effort to stay on top of current events, to dig into the Constitution to really double check if you hear some political hack say something is "unconstitutional," to read and listen to opinions from other points of view than your own, attend school and city board meetings, and never miss casting a vote in an election. That's bare minimum good citizenship. You're supposed to do that, without fanfare, like changing a diaper, which is a task people do while holding their nose. (Editor's note: Diaper-chaning, not voting.)
When Katrina did hit, instead of thinking about moving forward and helping in this natural disaster, cleaning up the big diaper, some folks surmised that something angered the almighty, something about New Orleans and Mississippi, which could only mean one of two things: A.) God hates the blues and jazz, or B.) God did a very thorough job of hurling a just & heavenly spitball at Trent Lott.
(By the way, your answer to the above question tells me everything I need to know about you.)
Of course, when there's any big change (in this universe of endless, constant change,) instead of trying to be innovative and adapting to the change, some say it's all part of God's plan, which absolves them of having to monkey around with it. Now speaking of monkeys, the current debate over whether we evolved from apes or were hatched in the Garden of Eden is an argument that crackles the airwaves on talk radio and livens up the proceedings at school board meetings. It's fun because it stirs up our adrenaline, which often just lies there stagnant in our dull, workaday lives. But it's a concern that affects your daily life about the same as the cholesterol count in dinosaur meat has on your health.
Truth is, these arguments aren't about faith, they're about the love of arguing. Faith, to many people, means having the peace of mind of believing a certain set of stories to be true, and that's that. It's treating a made-up mind like a sleeping bear. (Poke it and life gets complicated again.) People get pretty uncomfortable when you starting messing with their stories -- just ask anyone operating the "Guiding Light" switchboard when there's an emergency news interruption. But living a life of good deeds is a real exercise in creativity, patience and improvisation. Living a life of judgment, using old tracts as box of rocks to throw at people, is as inventive as reciting the alphabet.
Give me the words of William Mizner, who said "I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education." It makes you think, probe, do a good job, understand politics and science, and so when a storm does come along, you don't take it so personal, and when a storm passes over, you don't praise yourself for being lucky. Doubt is what makes you a great consumer, a tough parent, and a humbler servant.
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