My friend Nancy and I have dinner or coffee together once every six weeks or so. I cherish these meet-ups for so many reasons but mainly because I leave our time together once again reassured that I am not the "only one thinks that way". Our views on theology and politics line up very nicely. We don't agree on everything. But we listen to each other, challenge each other to view the world through a wider lens and urge each other on to do good in the world. Nancy once mentioned that she was encouraged I had done some in depth research and soul searching on a Biblical topic, to which I responded, "well, see, you are my friend and your views on that subject made me curious. So I did my own research, explored the subject deeper and came to a similar conclusion...it's really your fault."
A few weeks ago we had dinner together. Dinner started out with Nancy sharing about a book she was reading (I won't read it for awhile, but she highly recommends "When Breath Becomes Air". Once you read the description, if you know my family history the last two years, you won't be surprised if I skip that book for awhile) and then moved onto politics. Politics moved into hash tags - which cracked me up - and hence, here I am writing a blog post.
Nancy and I are both worried, concerned, sick, can't believe we have gotten to this place, I think you get the picture, about our country. We talked a lot about the potential for violence and the insanity that seems to take over whenever politics are involved. Nancy was speechless when I told her that I know people who will be voting for Trump. I can't believe it either, but there it is. We pondered how the "evangelical church" would stand behind Trump, when so many of the things Trump says flies in the face of what Jesus stands for. (I put evangelical church in quotes because I strongly dislike that one group of followers of Jesus have taken over a word that literally means "sharing the good news" and made it into something that feels shameful and dirty to me.)
We talked about my experience in Oklahoma a few years ago, an open carry state, where many people came into church with their guns on their hips, and marveled how foreign that seemed to us. While I respect others rights to feel differently, I don't like guns and don't believe guns are solving any problems in our society. We talked about statistics showing that open carry states have a higher crime rate than those states that don't have open carry laws. I'm still looking into those statistics.
We both know we are privileged, white women, who haven't really experienced discrimination. We know we can't fully understand discrimination and know we have, in ways we didn't mean or fully comprehend, have been guilty of discriminating against others. It bothers us deeply. We don't know what to do about it, other than continuing to educate ourselves and speak up when we recognize discrimination around us.
Since that conversation, I've become even more alarmed at things that have been said and done in politics, as well as things said and done during the Olympics. It alarms me that a young, black woman was so harshly criticized and taken to task for not putting her hand over her heart during the National Anthem during the Olympics. Nights later I turned on the TV to see two white males standing on the Olympic podium while the National Anthem was played and neither one of them had a hand over their hearts. I saw NOTHING about that on the Internet, heard NOTHING on the news making a big deal about their negligence to follow a flag protocol. Nor did I hear anything about them taking a stand in solidarity with the young, black woman a few nights earlier. I actually had to google flag protocol to see if there was actually something to the complaints. I never knew. I can't tell you the number of times I have stood for the National Anthem and not placed my hand over my heart. I simply didn't know that was protocol...and now that I do and such a stir has been caused about it, the rebel in me may just "forget" again.
That night at dinner, Nancy decided our hash tag, should we ever use one, for all the subjects we talked about and more would simply say IT'SNOTOKAY. (Especially when it comes to the things that come flying out of Mr. Trumps mouth - IT'SNOTOKAY.) And though I don't use hash tags, now when I watch the news or read articles the phrase that continually runs through my mind is...IT'SNOTOKAY. It's just not okay.
