Keep the Faith

       "Keep the Faith" were some of the last words my dad ever spoke to me.  He had become lucid enough and my family knew he was close to the end, so they got me on the phone.  I was in South Dakota, at my first base as a member of the Air Force's Enlisted cadre who loads bombs on the B-1 bomber.  It was early November, 2008.  He was in Lakeview hospital with a blood clot, water in the lungs and numerous other problems that couldn't easily be fixed.  I had already arranged vacation time with my bosses and they obliged after hearing my situation.  I remember having just renewed my government driver's license so I could drive a "bread truck," a tow truck, and a de-icing truck on  the flightline.

       I'll never emotionally forget that conversation.  I knew what was happening and so did he.  He was tired and he hurt but he was mine for 60 seconds.  He didn't ever seem to fully accept me joining the military and I have never resolved that internally.  I will also never forget the day I told him I joined.  He used comedy as a defense.  It threw me off and I never got back on track as far as he was concerned.  As one of my heroes that has been a persistent dagger pierced well beneath the skin.

       Over the years, I have morphed and molded away from someone you might consider "keeping the faith."  One aspect I DO consider to keep the faith in, is humanity.  I don't pretend to be staying true to a father's dying words, but I do intend to claim hold on an aspect of faith, just as every other human on earth.  Even the Atheist says, "I have faith (or, I know) that there is no God."  Not that I'm an Atheist.  I find them to be arrogant, just as those who say, "I have faith (or, I know) there is a God."

        What is important? Let's fast-forward a billion years from now.  What is important? What stands the test of time? What will never change as far as how we define decency, love, compassion and mercy?  Being human to each other.  Life is tender, fleeting, delicate and quick.  Why is it so important to stress anything to a child other than love? Jesus didn't show us love for one another so we could go around preaching Jesus.  He showed us love so we could go around preaching love.  We have idolized Jesus when he wanted no such thing.  What he wanted has been missed by many many Christians worldwide.  Similarly, many Jews and Muslims have leveraged their prophets and gods for bad in the world.

          Yet, if we drop the entire act and have a conversation that talks about what is important today and today only, most of us can agree on the priorities.  Treat each other with dignity, respect, love, compassion and mercy.  No person deserves to sleep on a park bench.  No person deserves to eat with the pigeons or the rats.  Those we turn away, had it been 2000 years ago, would have found Jesus to listen to, to eat with and to have heal them, AFTER WE turned them away.

          I have experienced subtle inklings of distaste over my religious decisions as of late.  Overall, I appreciate them.  They give me perspective and I know where people stand and how they think, not only of me, but how they think in general.  In a way, they are showing their intellectual hand.  Now socially, I am quite inhibited, so one may easily say the same about me.  I like to hide behind emails.  face-to-face is the worst, phone conversations is next, texting comes third, and an arena like commenting in facebook or Google+ would come fourth.  Email is detached from anything realtime. One can mull over a response, write, rewrite, edit and show any and every emotion before hitting the send button.  I rarely have that luxury.  Coming back to the inklings.  I find them refreshing mostly because it seems I come from a culture that chooses not to talk about conflict.  Thus, when someone addresses "conflict" it is nice they feel that they know me well enough at least to address it.  When we ignore, avoid or otherwise skirt a topic of discomfort among loved ones, it tells them you really don't care enough about them.

        Don't get me wrong, I do it too.  Remember, I am the social retard.  I come from a solid family of socially retarded people.  In the acknowledgment of my religious differences, it has become apparent that the distaste often comes saturated in superiority.  Now I know that is the wrong word.  Yet, religious people nine out of ten times look at irreligious people as lost.  Most of us are definitely NOT lost.  On the contrary, we feel we have stumbled or studiously enlightened ourselves away from religious lifestyles and we often bite our tongue upon looking back, rather than say something that implies your ignorance or blatant lack of enlightenment.  Another reason we bite our tongues is the fact that we have already been ridiculed for our decisions.  Opening our mouths often invites more ridicule.

       Don't get me wrong here, either.  Not everyone leaves religious faith for the same reasons.  Not everyone agrees on this side, just like not everyone agrees on your side.  That is partly my argument.  What enlightened religious people over the years have taught over and over again is to be loving and compassionate toward each other.  We are never going to come to religious agreement, therefore it is fruitless to lose sleep, or, more importantly, lose relationships and loves over it.  Treating each other like humans is the message.  Our time is fleeting.  Our attitude in our daily lives is often broken.  We seek everything but human connections, myself included.  Religion, along with capitalism and the whole work-yourself-till-you-die attitude we have come to accept are all causes to our disconnect from each other.