You don't go into coalition because you just like it. The only reason you would consider trying to team up somebody who could possibly kill you, is because that's the only way you can figure you can stay alive.
I want to talk a little about turning the century and the principles. Some of us will be dead. We won't be here. And many of us take ourselves too seriously. We think that what we think is really the cutting line. Most people who are up on the stage take themselves too seriously-it's true. You think that what you've got to say is special and that somebody needs to hear it. That is arrogance. That is egotism, and the only checking line is when you have somebody to pull your coattails. Most of us think that the space we live in is the most important space there is, and that the condition that we find ourselves in is the condition that must be changed or else. That is only partially the case. If you analyze the situation properly, you will know that there might be a few things you can do in your personal, individual interest so that you can experience and enjoy the change. But most of the things that you do, if you do them right, are for people who live long after you are long forgotten. That will only happen if you give it away. Whatever it is that you know, give it away, and don't give it away only on the horizontal. Don't give it away like that, because they're gonna die when you die, give or take a few days. Give it away that way (up and down). And what I'm talking about is being very concerned with the world you live in, the condition you find yourself in, and be able to do the kind of analysis that says that what you believe in is worthwhile for human beings in general, and in the future, and do everything you can to throw yourself into the next century. And make people contend with your baggage, whatever it is. The only way you can take yourself seriously is if you can throw yourself into the next period beyond your little meager human-body-mouth-talking all the time.How the story I'm about to tell relates to that may not be immediately apparent. I hope that by the time I'm done, it will be. And yeah, it's another long-winded "all about me"-treatise attempting to impart political insight based on personal, first-hand experience in the real world.
I am concerned that we are very shortsighted, and we think that the issue we have at this moment has to be addressed at this moment or we will die. It is not true. It is only a minor skirmish. It must be waged guerrilla-warfare style. You shoot it out, get behind the tree so you don't get killed, because they ain't gonna give you what you asked for. You must be ready to go out again tomorrow and while you're behind the tree you must be training the people who will be carrying the message forward into the next period, when they do kill you from behind the tree.
Christianity does not have a monopoly on the power of testimony. So consider it a chapter in "testifyin'....".
Let me state from the outset that I am not of the Christian faith. Never will be. As a German-Jewish-Native-American-Female, I have every reason to have a chip as big as Mt. Ararat on my shoulder with regard to the Christian faith-and even more, toward its practitioners in the real world. Generations of my family have been wiped out-exterminated, swept from the face of the earth-swept, clean as a whistle-by highly "literate," infinitely "articulate," putatively "civilized" people/s: maternally, by generations of men and women who set out to create "one Nation, under God"-under one God, one male God, one white male God-a God of envy, a God of vengeance, a God of hellfire, brimstone and anger. Someone else's God, not mine; paternally, by a single generation of men and women of Protestant and Catholic faith who either actively participated in, stood by and watched or, in a few exceptional cases, fought in vain to stop the madness as six million of my paternal ancestors were incinerated by an industrialized killing machine.
In this "one Nation under God," my religion-the Anishinabe religion-was not even afforded constitutional protection until the last quarter of the 20th century, with the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on August 12, 1978. And to this day, people of my faith continue to struggle for the right to pray on this land. To this day, our sacred sites -- call them "churches" if you will-are under attack from vandals, pillagers, plunderers and thieves. "It is a question that is alive throughout this society," Winona LaDuke wrote in her 1999 publication, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life, "the question of who gets to determine the destiny of the land, and of the people who live on it-those with the money or those who pray on the land" (5). To this day, stalwart individuals scattered across the continent are engaged in the valiant struggle to protect and defend these sacred sites (see also Winona LaDuke, Recovering the Sacred). It is a struggle that will continue as long as the grass grows and the waters run.
Because they cannot be situated within the strictures of "organized" religion, these religions are often not even acknowledged to be formal "religions" (Native Americans don't practice "religion," they are visited by something slightly sinister called "spirituality"). Accordingly, the sacred sites where these religious practices are performed are not recognized as "temples." But that will never stop adherents of these religions from praying on and for these sites.
As a radical lesbian feminist in the early 80s, I happened upon the most cogent and extensive critique of the Christian faith I have yet to see written: Beyond God the Father by Mary Daly. In the late 80s and early 90s, I enjoyed the privilege of meeting and working intensively with Daly-as friend, "co-hort", oral interpreter and fellow Phallic Reality Basher (the details of our adventures are outlined in her 1993 autobiography, Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Voyage). Though I am obviously no longer a "lesbian feminist," I remain firmly rooted in radical thought and deeply committed to the cause of radical change. Daly's radical critique of Christianity still forms the bedrock of my position on this subject. Little has changed with regard to my views on the Christian faith-or any monotheistic, patriarchal, indeed, any anthropomorphic religion. I am no more interested in an "angry and jealous God" than I am in an "angry and jealous Goddess." My Gods are solid as rock, light as a feather-they ebb and flow like tides, like willows, they bend with the wind-and yes, sometimes they weep.
I returned to the United States in 1992/93 from Germany--a country whose constitution guarantees the "freedom of religion" but one which collects religious taxes from the public and demonstrates a great degree of cooperation between church and state in the context of much more secular political climate than the US.
I was accustomed to engaging in-and in fact prided myself on-absolutely heretical, in-your-face defamation of the Christian religion: in my public speaking engagements and my writing, I had coined such terms as "der große Pimmel am Himmel" (the Big Dick in Heaven), or "Herren der Erschöpfung" (Masters of EXHAUSTION, as opposed to "masters of creation"). In the radical feminist context of my small world, one thing was taken as a given: Christianity was a mother-fucking (in the most vulgar and literal sense of the term), god-damned (and doomed) evil piece-of-shit religion to be opposed in the vilest, most vituperative and vicious idiom possible. I assumed that this view would be shared by any and all human beings who had fallen prey to the pitfalls of this religion throughout the history of its worldwide ravages. And I considered it my obligation-my responsibility-to point this out, publicly and in the strongest terms possible, again and again and again. It was the Truth. And I was a Truth pusher.
Imagine my surprise then, when I enrolled in a course on Native American Culture taught by the son of a tribal elder and spiritual/religious leader from the LCO Reservation. At the time, I was consulting with the man's mother-a member of the sacred Midewin Lodge of the Ojibwe and of the tribal council at the time. I went off on a defamatory tirade against Christianity in his class. The man slapped me down. Hard. "You call yourself an Anishinabe?! And you come in here like this, spouting off, spewing one string of invectives after another about Christianity? What do you know about your own religion, your own culture, your own history?!"
It was a rude awakening. And the first thing I did was to run off crying to his Mama about it. "Do you know what your son said to me!?" Yeah, well both she and I knew that ultimately he was right.
A lot has changed since then. I've taken his words to heart--and while I still don't and won't ever "know it all"--I certainly know more today about my own religion, my own culture and my own history than I did then. There are some things I'll never know. Indeed, Christianity and its practitioners have contributed to that end-in many unforgivable ways. But, you know, as the Bible says: "What's done is done."
For the past 13 years, the few organizations and communities that have supported, respected and appreciated my work as an artist and community educator independent of ulterior motives to appropriate it and/or to wrench it from my hands/head/heart have been "faith-based" communities, organizations, individuals or initiatives-most, though not all, predominately African American.
If anyone had said to me, in 1993, that the one community with which I would be able to best "get along," the one community with which I would be most likely to collaborate and engage in "coalition politics," the one community that would be most likely to accept me as I am and on my own terms would be comprised primarily of fundamentalist Black Baptists, I'd have laughed and said: Yaright.
Well, yaright.
Now, you might think that in these past 13 years I'd have taken the "path of least resistance" -- simply "go along to get along" in this environment of radically divergent belief systems. To practice a policy of "don't ask, don't tell" and pretend that I am also of the Christian faith. That I am a "believer," a "child of God." But that's not what I have done. In my work with faith-based initiatives and Christian-oriented organizations, I have always been up front about it: Please understand: I am not of the Christian faith. And I never will be.
Funny, that. No one has come along and hit me over the head with a Bible. Sure, I've heard some off-the-cuff statements like "Amazing what you could do if you would only see the Light...." Or something to that effect. Amazing what you could do if would only accept "God/Jesus" in your life. Now, of course, I could have turned those occasions into "come-to-Jesus"-moments and said, "Listen up! I do have "god" in my life-lots of them, in fact. And I have seen the Light. Many million points of Light. Take your fuckin' God-talk and shove it! Keep your fucking scriptures off my soul and your fucking laws off my body!" Which is probably what I'd have done 15 years ago. But I haven't. And the payoff has been worth it.
About 7 years to go, "push came to shove" on a religious issue: while working for a Christian, faith-based program, I was invited to travel with 6 children, their parents and a fleet of about 25 drums from the city of Minneapolis to perform at the University of Chicago. It was a well-paid performance and a tremendous opportunity for these children from the deepest heart of the hard-core hood: to perform at a prestigious private university in Chicago. In some ways, it was the performance of a lifetime--a great gift from the Great Spirit. In preparation for this trip, I spent many an hour pondering a religious conflict that I would inevitably have to confront: there was no way in hell I was going to embark on a journey of that length with that degree of responsibility-the lives of six children, their parents and chaperones-on an 800-mile roundtrip road trip without performing an appropriate Native American ceremony, one that I perform before every journey I make. And it was clear that all of us had to participate in that ceremony. So I just laid it on the line. I said to the adults in the room, in the presence of the children-there is no way I am going to embark on this journey without the attendant form of "prayer" mandated by my religious beliefs. I can understand if you are not comfortable performing and participating in that ceremony here, within the walls of your house of God--and if that's the case, we can perform it outside on the street corner--but I cannot embark on this journey without performing that ceremony.
Well, there was some hemmin' and hawin', but what we ended up agreeing to was that we would pray to the Christian God for blessings in the church basement, then we would go outside and address the matter to my "Gods" on the street corner. And that's what we did. That was "coalition politics" in action.
In the years since then, I have been pushed even further to the limits of religious tolerance by the fact that I've since become a member of a family (by "marital affiliation") with a fervently Christian background and practice. My mother-and-father-in-law are the founders of a major Black Baptist church. My father-in-law was a professor at a major school of Baptist thought. Everyone but "hubby" (to whom I am not, incidentally, actually married!) is a devout Baptist. There are at least three Baptist ministers in the family. For the duration of my relationship with this family, I have-with only two exceptions-avoided attending church services (at Christmas, for example, or family reunions). It has always felt like a "bridge too far."
The Christmas before last, "Mama" specifically requested that both my "husband" and I attend the Christmas service. Specifically: "I want both of you there." (Mama's initial reaction to our relationship, incidentally, was to say "So, you're shackin' up, are you?"-that was the only sign of disapproval either of us has ever received from this devoutly Christian family on the subject of our non-sanctified civil union). I refused. Even though I knew in my heart-moreso than Hubby did-that that was going to be the last opportunity I ever had to demonstrate my respect and gratitude toward "Mama" for the many, many wonderful things she has done with her life: not least of all, putting the man I call "Hubby" on the planet. I knew it. And yet, in my snooty-assed refusal to come off my high-falutin' suckass potty-mouthed dismissal of the Christian faith-I refused to enter that House of God just one last time. The House of God that "Mama" built, from the bottom up. And I do mean the bottom. I have seen "Mama's" old homestead in Macon, Georgia. I know where the bottom is.
The next time I had that chance, I was seated in the House of God that Mama had founded, together with her husband--seated in the "family row" of a church filled with at least 600 parishioners, 99.9 % of them African American, as they laid the church Matriarch to rest--or, as they say in that church, on the occasion of her "Homecoming." Yeah. That was a "come-to-Jesus"-moment for me. It was a very difficult listening hour (and a half). To this day, I am kicking myself in my potty-mouthed-fucking-defiantly-antichristian-ASS for not having had the foresight and the respect to attend that church service the Christmas before. And I know for a fact that this is one little act of religious defiance that I will regret for the rest of my life. In the limousine on the way to the cemetery, Hubby's sister apologized to me for the length of the service. I have never felt so ashamed of my self and my own actions as I did in that moment. She apologized. To me. For the length of the service. God, did I feel like a fucking asshole in that moment. Seriously. And yes, Hubby's sister has been a Bush supporter all along. Not sure where she stands on that score today. Post-Katrina. But up until then....she was a Bush-supporter. (The only one left in the family, I might add. But still.)
Now, since then, I have become much more conscious of what I say and what I do in the context of my less-than-felicitous relationship with the Christian church, with the Christian faith, with its followers-whoever they may be.
One thing's for sure, these experiences will continue to shape my political views, my political decisions, my choices concerning coalition politics, the candidates I support and for what reasons. Such is life. Deal with it.
Yeah, "I want both of you there." Oh how I wish to God there were some God somewhere who could erase from my memory the sound of those words. But there isn't.
There does remain some small comfort in these words...
You don't go into coalition because you just like it. The only reason you would consider trying to team up somebody who could possibly kill you, is because that's the only way you can figure you can stay alive.
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