That one-hundred dollar forged steel art pencil I bought this summer really hasn’t served the purpose I imagined which was to motivate me to keep my desk clean for writing. The photograph below tells the story. The steel pencil is buried beneath the clutter somewhere and I sit in bed typing these words.
I had good intentions—not the sort that the road to hell is paved with. There is really no damnable offense here. Just clutter. If I had to use an aphorism to redirect this character fault I’d say cleanliness is next to godliness. That is more in line with my way of thinking about a higher power and how being clutter free is related to thoughtfulness and meditation.
I also like to believe that if this relationship between god and cleanliness were true that my grandmother Knott would be very close to god. You could eat off the linoleum floor in her kitchen and a wet, hard candy that fell from your mouth onto her living room carpet wouldn’t bring with it a single hair or speck of dust.
Grandma was a god-fearing woman. She went to church every Sunday and would sit with the bible and read it though I sometimes wonder if it was primarily a sleep aid.
The most enjoyment and inspiration I ever got from that book was as a discussion starter in a bible study group I belonged to with a bunch of (mostly) homeless men in the rectory of St. Boniface Church in the Tenderloin.
Barbara Graves was the only woman I ever saw in the group and she was the leader. A Quaker, anti-war activist and bronze star recipient for her work for the Red Cross in WW2 Europe — which she later gave back in protest — she was eighty years young—compassionate, strong and good-humored she celebrated people speaking their mind.
I think she probably had a straight and narrow path she followed like my grandmother but her’s involved listening to people’s stories that might include one older man’s regular recitation of working at a laundromat and giving blow jobs to customers at the back of the store.
Entertaining such discourse would have been as alien and inconceivable to my grandmother Knott as an invitation to board a spacecraft and be taken to its leader.
The bible study group always started off with a song and when I was chosen to pick it from the binder I always chose “Lord of the Dance,” because it had a catchy, exacting beat and our motley crew reminded me of medieval people who I could imagine ticking their heads back and forth to the sound of lutes and flutes and whining bagpipes. The dance would have been closer to hopping on and off one leg.
I’m not a religious person but I do have some faith in a higher power whether that is a collective consciousness or a million wings of monarch butterflies in migration.
Recently, an offence to my non-religious nature has been reignited. I know this makes it sound like I look for opportunities to be bothered but I think I really do my best to not be offended but at times find myself suddenly worn down. This time it has to do with the “under god” version of the Pledge of Allegiance that one of my schools says over the loudspeaker every morning.
To the credit of the principal, after my original complaint, he made the pledge optional by adding in the words “if you would like to join us”. Still, I don’t think it’s enough. There is a lot of talk about equity and what that looks like in the school district. By my way of thinking, in the case of the pledge, equity would mean not just telling the students that they have a choice of whether to join in, but also educating them on the other way to say it and why some people do not want to use the word god.
Previous to working at this school I worked at another school for four years where this version of the pledge was also said. At that school I was sometimes with a group of students when the pledge was recited. I’d either pause and leave out “under god” and return to synchrony with the students as they finished “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” or sometimes I’d just drive on through out of sync and end before them. That would get odd looks and sometimes questions that gave me the opportunity to explain the different way to say it and why.
Occasionally I’d be caught in the office with other adults and I would simply stop what I was doing and stand without speaking. One morning I was in the office crouched down filing papers in a lower cabinet when the announcement came on led by students in another room. “Stop, stand and face the flag. Put your hand over your heart and begin,” was the script used.
The principal was in the office with me and that day I chose to not stand but simply stop shuffling through the files in respect of quiet. Seeing that I wasn’t rising, my principal looked at me quite pointedly and I rose though I did not join in with the words. The look she gave led me to write a note to her about my beliefs and why I did not like using the word god.
While it changed nothing at the school, the principal apologized for offending me. When a new principal came the next year the pledge was no longer said and I felt a sense of relief at not having to go through the motions.
In 1954 President Eisenhower added “under god” to the original pledge that was written in the late 1800s. It had become increasingly popular in public use and Eisenhower wanted to add the words to protest growing communism. By the 1970s and presumably earlier there were enough protests that most school districts dropped “under god” and resumed the earlier form. In the heavily Christian deep south where I lived for all of my primary and secondary schooling “under god” was mostly not used.
I don’t understand when people complain that “you’ve taken god out of school” since we have a long history of leaving deities out of it. One of the pillars of this country is freedom of religion and the separation of “church and state” and what fits more in the category of “state” than public education?
It would be nice if a treatment of different religions and non-religions were added to the common core standards of education. Religion is an important aspect of humanity and tolerance for different beliefs is a worthy subject. Mentioning god to the exclusion of other beliefs does not have a place in the education of people representing all those backgrounds.
In recent history, it has been common practice for presidents to end speeches with “and may god bless America.” Ronald Reagan began ending his speeches with it and all presidents since then have as well. To my annoyance Barack Obama, who I consider a great orator, continued the tradition. It’s pandering to the masses. Thoughtful Christians should rethink what it means to be all for one and one for all.
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I intend to return soon to the subject of Ithaca and my late summer visit. There is more left there to be said but something I’m beginning to learn with this blogging is that if I try to get everything in that I want to talk about I often end up frustrated with the end result of putting out nothing.
Spotty West Goes East 