THERE’S MORE TO EVERY STORY (THAN WHAT’S BEING TOLD)
VOICES 2025
There’s more to every story than what’s being told. The body of God suspends time, floats. I need to leave my Egypt to make it to the Promised Land. The body of Christ aches, suffers. Each person is more than what they appear to be. The body of the Holy Spirit dances, whirls. Altars covered in marigolds, bananas and arroz con leche. That’s where the dead go, welcome. Intolerance has no humor, no grace; it’s pure ignorance, set to go after, humiliate and stop what's unfamiliar, new and outside the ordinary. Popeye had it right: I am who I am, loving my girl and getting my spinach will keep me going strong. If the love of war could just fade out like a roadside billboard, then the idea of killing people of another tribe because “we need to” could become a relic of another time.
Surrealism is meant to get society to look at its sicknesses. Guns go off into a crowd, the phone people rush in first, headlines are made before the medics arrive. The fear machine makes more death, more debt and more doubt because it knows how to sell it so well. The American 1950s were a jacked-up, post-war frenzy, of speed, righteousness and success, set on buying time-saving appliances, living to get more, moving up, until the birth defects were explained. That the children are being ignored now is beyond comprehension. The Tomorrow dream, where comfort and ease are generously distributed, ignores the complexity and misfortune of our disease today. This is a situation that calls for more than what the family doctor can do. I am naked. There’s no curtain.
Freedom is the privilege to experiment as a society, to love as an individual and be wrong at any time. Could ours fade away? Does anyone remember what it means to be free, what it takes to protect our neighbor’s right to be different? That matters. Aversions and preferences corrupt the individual and make the collective really crazy. The Lunacy Commission is here. The deficient will be found out. New value and new meaning will be given to rocks, paper and scissors. I only talk to myself. What could possibly go wrong? Aren’t I the stuff of stars? Aren’t I radiant? Aren’t I a holy miracle of breathing, a beaming continuous arc of holy connection? Why then, do I come apart so easily? Why am I so narrow? So sharp? So disconnected? So fragile? What is it I’ve forgotten?
Ruin is all that comes from complaining incessantly. I ruin any chance of moving on to something more intelligent. My discontent, my disappointment, I don’t want to hear it either. When I blame anyone, we both lose our dignity. I want to participate in my own rescue, grab the rope when it comes, be true to the past and to the future. There’s a need for a huge museum acknowledging slavery and its legacy. Without one, America holds centuries of hurt close, with nowhere to put it. There’s a need for national plan to stop anyone from walking into a school with a gun and killing children and teachers. It’s important to know how societies form, how they each forget to be kind, inclusive, helpful, and what happens next. I go out to walk at sunset to marvel at the new angels.