« Naked and Nameless | Main

Recently, there was a Disney event for Blogging parents that got some excitement in some of the blogging communities I belong to.

Until someone noticed that it fell on Passover.

The controversy that was subsequently raised boiled down to this: should non-Religious venues & events take into account Religious holidays?

Which got me to noticing that in the past decade or more, the concept of American Pluralism has been defined as segregating all religious influence from secular community.

And I began to wonder... what the hell does this solve?

When I was a kid, I met another Elizabeth. Christmas break, I went over to her house for a play date and noticed there was no Christmas tree. I asked here where it was.

"We're Jewish, we don't have a Christmas tree," she told me.

"What kind of people don't have a Christmas tree? Don't you like Jesus?" I demanded.

"Jesus is fine, but we believe other things are more sacred," her mother told me.

I was flummoxed by this. I think I responded with the 10-year-old version of 'Wow, that is so f**ked up!'

I wasn't shoved out the door on my ass, which says a lot more about their Character than it does about mine.

My parents raised me with post-Hippie tolerant ideology while living in a heterosexual, Caucasian, Christian world. In my fuzzy, evolving world view I was aware there were some people covered their hair, or prayed in chant, or even made cows Holy instead of into McQuarter Pounders. But they lived somewhere else, and they weren't gonna visit me.

I grew up, I lived more. I got my cosmic egg cracked reading Castaneda. I spent a lost weekend with a Muslim cab driver from Africa who carved bits of wood while telling me stories with passionate eyes. I began studying Theology at a Jesuit University. I ate curried rice on purpose at the Hare Krishna temple and some raw horseradish accidentally at a Seder.

And I met Bishop Griswold. He was Bishop in Chicago and I was a volunteer at the Cathedral. And that's when the rubber really met the road.

It was a hot summer, and so many children were being killed in accidental shootings and drive-by's. It seemed like nothing could protect them from the dangers of their own city. As my entire congregation began working to find ways to ease the suffering, the situation, the confusion, I found myself going to Interfaith breakfasts and Mayor's council meetings.

And at every one, we would start the meeting with a prayer. Jews and Muslims and Agnostics and Christians and even Lawyers together.

I'm sure not everyone believed there is a higher power. God, Goddess, Yahweh, Allah, Odin, or even Horton - sometimes none resonate in a person's soul as Truth. But that never stopped everyone from bowing their heads in supplication to whatever forces there might be help us end the tragedies we were facing.

The miracle came later. After the summer's tensions eased. I found myself staying on some of these groups to continue the work. Yet even as the immediate crisis waned, we still bowed our heads.

Because there was so much more to do, and we needed all the help we could get. This tone was set by the community leaders - including (and I think especially) Bishop Griswold. Despite the guy's outstanding scholastic credentials, it was obvious was a pastor of people.

He celebrated faith and spirituality with us as elements that can not exist in paper or tradition - only in life. There will always be those who think a person's religion should be parsed by cherry-picking Leviticus, but in my years working with the Bishop I realized that at its most vital essence - faith is a verb.

It forces us to live with what is unexplained and unproved. It spurs us to action when our neighbors hurt. It causes us to regret the things we do against its nature. It overlooks bad hair days and social gaffes and trains us on what has purpose and meaning.

And at the end of the day? Faith demands us to recognize it in others, and all those who seek it.

Faith is the very foundation of this country we live in. A leap of faith into an experiment that is still hanging in there, more than 200 years later.

But where we once acknowledge faith, and the religions that frame it, now we tread so carefully on the separation of Church and State that we've empowered the Corporation above both.

I was flabbergasted to read the statements of those who said that it is not Disney's job to respect the high Holy days of a minority religion because in this pluralistic society, we shouldn't recognize any of them.

Do you buy that?

I don't.

I say screw that kind of pluralism.

Yeah, OK. Being tolerant, respectful, and considerate to all religions is hard. Well, harder than hard - impossible. There are a thousand ways to get it wrong and frankly, there is no real way to get it right. It's a process of always trying to screw up the least amount.

So it is much, much easier and maybe more fair to substitute a policy of treating all religion the same - and ignore them all.

It's also wrong.

We are human beings, not policy statements. I don't care about our lowest common denominator.

Because you know what? We're more than that. Give us religion. Give us faith. Any kind of faith. All kinds of religion. And let it inspire and amaze us and divide us and ground us.

Give us what exists in the many and not what eliminates differences. Even if we get it wrong, the honor is in the intent.

I say give us the kind of pluralism that tries to do the impossible and the uncomfortable. That attempts to respect all the religions that embody it, whether that's convenient for a Corporate calendar - or not.