intolerance

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Sometimes my own intolerance and impatience just comes around and bites me on the ass. You might think that with time and experience, this shit might give me a break, take a vacation in Hawaii or something, but nooooooooo... here it comes again, as full of self-serving yap as one of those idiotic miniaturized dogs.

I was reading (hint, hint -- don't do that, Adam) a Christian blogger's observations a little while ago. He is a kindly man full of activist spirit that I like quite a lot: Go for it -- get out there and raise hell for what you believe in! This is a nice man who has been disdained by the Roman Catholic Church he clove to for so long ... disdained and dismissed because he is homosexual. And that, to my mind, is worth raising hell over: Inequality in the eye of whatever anyone might define god as speaks mightily to the fallaciousness of that god.

Over and over and over again, this blogger strikes hard at the unkindnesses of an institution that, when asked, will tell anyone listening that it is founded on kindness ... except for gays, women and whomever all else does not fit into a lock-step theology.

Well, fuck that! That is simply stupid and unkind and indefensible ... and deserves every black eye anyone might care to deliver in my book.

Over and over again, the blows are delivered, the paean sounded, the outrage evinced ... and every complaint is a complaint well-founded. And yet each and every complaint suggests that the church and its outriggers are in need of a reform that might make that church vibrant and whole and kindly in a more nourishing sense. In essence, the church with its follies can be restored as the church without follies... meaning that the church being criticized is the framework within which to carry on a restorative conversation.

And here's where my intolerance and impatience comes in.

Why is it that what was once much beloved must be so fiercely preserved. The preservation is as fierce among critics as it is among the dyed-in-the-wool supporters. Within the blog criticisms, there seems to be little or no willingness to turn the mirror around ... if you don't like anchovies, well, stop eating anchovies. What's the matter with the two good feet you were born with, the ones on which anyone might stand and say, "I don't like this and I don't need anyone else to tell me I don't like it."

What's the matter with taking even a little time out from the impassioned arguments to wonder what steps might be taken to actually ameliorate that which -- from within the fiercely preserved format -- has proven so closed to improvement? Not that anyone would have to surrender a favored preserve all at once, but wouldn't it be nice to consider (just a little bit, just now and then) that life inside the box is not really the life you want to lead?

Over and over and over again ... chasing an ever-receding tail ... honing and refining arguments ... citing endless sources of someone else's wisdom ... and calling on others to join the plaint ... as if, were enough people joined together in a similar wail, the wail might be more true.

And this approach is hardly limited to a particular blogger or a particular topic. It's so delicious to wail. I know: I can wail with the best of them. I love my worries and concerns and improvements as well as the next fellow. But if your whine justifies my whine and my whine justifies yours, is it simply arrogance or too much privilege that asks what it might be like to examine the whine and perhaps stop relying on institutional or individual others for ratification? Wouldn't it be nice to stop whining ... or at least take a shot at it?

Is all activism premised on whining?

I don't know, but I like to think not. I dislike it when I gloss over the me-me-me-me-me that can infuse righteousness... cuddling up with the intellectual and emotional comforters that are so comforting.

Oh my intolerance really is intolerable! I guess I'd better get off my much-bitten ass and do something about it.

But you gotta admit I whine pretty good, right?
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