One of the great words of wisdom I heard many years ago now, and have tried to live by ever since is, "When the world tells you to choose either/or, see if there is any way you can make it both/and."
I spent most of the years of my life raging at organized religious organizations. I saw them - still do, actually - as the primary source of a very vicious form of bigotry known as homophobia, and I hated them for it. Saw them as Enemy Number One, something I would be committed to fighting against as long as I lived. They were people who misrepresented me and others like me, who turned the way I experienced love and affection and compassion into something dirty and shameful. Every time something came out that put organized religion into a bad light, I exulted - the hypocrisy of TV evangelists like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (him more than her - she was just a goofball) and Ted Haggard, the child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Good show! I thrilled. Damned hypocrites!
It took me years to recognize that I was doing the same thing to religious people that some religious people were doing to me - painting them with too broad a brush. They were looking at me and other gay people as people selfishly and totally preoccupied with sexual release, and I was looking at all Christians as mean-spirited ignoramuses. It took time for me to talk myself down from such an unworthy black-and-white position, to realize that I had grown up among good Christian people, people who taught me right from wrong, and spread the message of love and forgiveness and compassion.
What was confusing the issue was my failure to buy into the theocratic ideology of people of the Christian faith, the idea that there was a single (male) force who called life into being, created us as sinners whom he then turned around and redeemed by human sacrifice, and commanded us to live by a set of behaviors at the risk of eternal damnation. Just couldn't buy it, and that meant I now had two separate reasons for turning my back on Christianity: the fact that they were homophobic bullies, and the fact that they were living by a set of made-up notions pulled from their left ear.
As the years went by, I learned a lot from watching Jews up close. Many of the Jews I knew could not make sense of the concept of a loving god after experiencing how this god sat back and allowed his "chosen family" to die by the millions under the most miserable of circumstances. But they retained their sense of connection with other Jewish people, many of whom did continue to be believers in the Jewish religion. They lived side by side, these non-religious Jews with religious Jews.
In time I noted something similar was going on in Germany with the many immigrants from places like Turkey, Syria and Egypt who had rejected the Muslim faith of their families as belonging to a pre-modern age. As they became Germans, they took on the modern sectarian cultural values of their countrymen, all the while retaining a sentimental attachment to the language and culture of their original homelands. They became both/and people, as opposed to either/or people.
As I reflected on the many times I have heard political folk, like the commentators on Fox News, speak of "Putting Christ back into Christmas," I came to realize that I had more in common with those Jews and Muslims than I did with religious Christians. I see no need to rewrite Merry Xmas as Merry Christmas, but I love the stained-glass windows of Chartres Cathedral. I love Christmas trees. I love the sound of sleigh bells ringing. I am, and will almost certainly always remain, culturally Christian. It's the culture of the people I grew up with and still identify with. I love the idea of kids sitting on the lap of Santa Claus telling him what they want for Christmas, the fantasy land of snow-covered houses on Christmas cards, and the sing-along Messiahs. I've even participated in one of these and hope to again one day.
One of the most memorable and meaningful times in my life was the time that Harvey Milk was assassinated in San Francisco by a disgruntled former cop. I went to his funeral, which was held at that gorgeous synagogue on the corner of Arguello and Lake Street, Temple Emanu-el. Milk was not a religious Jew, but when the cantor came out and sang the prayer for the dead, I was moved like never before. I couldn't stop the tears. I fancied I heard 5000 years of Jewish suffering encapsulated in the chanting, and if somebody had passed around a sign-up list for becoming Jewish, I would have put my name on it then and there. I can't recall now which prayer it was, exactly, but you can get a sense of what I am talking about by listening to Cantor Azi Schwartz at a memorial for the fallen of 9/11.
It mattered tremendously that this Jewish congregation was acknowledging one of their own in this way, despite and over the protests of its chief rabbi, who didn't hide his homophobia. The message that came through was that although diversity can divide us, it just as frequently brings us together - if we let it.
The sun is about to go down on the Pacific Coast today - September 6th - and when it does local Jews will mark the beginning of a new year: Rosh HaShanah, and a time of reflection. A profoundly moving event, one which joins Jews with Buddhists and others who know the value of meditation and the benefits of prayerful devotion to the things that make life worth living. I grew up among Christians initially, but I've also had time now to live among Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and others of religious faith. I have no need to concern myself with doctrinal beliefs in order to embrace the richness of the cultures these faiths have produced over the years.
Let me end with a meditation on that wonderful secular Christmas song, "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas" by the Jew, Irving Berlin. Composer and conductor of the Toronto Symphony, Rob Kapilow, analyzes the popular song and tells us he senses here and there a bit of "Yiddishkeit." A wonderful example of both/and. A cultural Jew contributing to Christian America's cultural heritage, in a way that includes us all, lets us be not either Christian or Muslim or Jew but all of those simultaneously.
And more.
Shanah Tovah!
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