All respects to heaven, I like it here: June 2011

I haven't slept in 21 hours, and I'm feeling pretty loopy. And by loopy I mean ridiculously in love with everything- the sun that's currently rising, the barn across the street, the mess all over my bed, my best friend who's asleep in her little house on Main Street, the boy who will be waking up for work in an hour. I'm in love with the past, the present, and the future. And my mother, who has been the only one to know me during all of my past, even before I was born. Whenever I get into these crazy sentimental moods and realize the beauty of life all over again, I just want to capture everything in words, photos, and little souvenirs - like receipts and dried up flowers placed into books.

I keep taking pictures like this one, pictures of places I've seen my whole entire life, just in case my memory one day proves to be fallible:

Even though I'm only going to be 30 minutes away, I feel like once I leave, coming home will never quite be the same again.

Flannery O'Connor short stories are often tragic. My favorite, "The River," tells about a little boy who took religious ideas literally and drowned himself in a river while looking for happiness and the Kingdom of Christ. The current pulled him under, and the story ends with the boy looking from the water as Mr. Paradise watches him float away. Of course the story is heartbreaking, but it's beautiful - so full of passion and hypocrisies and characters with good intentions who are terminally thoughtless and narrow-minded and blinded by their preacher's interpretations of Jesus Christ. This is the south to me, too.

Lately I've found myself more and more conflicted about living in North Carolina, especially since I happen to live in one of the most Christ-haunted (as O'Connor would say) areas. I'm right smack in the middle of the Bible Belt, where Baptist Churches are as common as hungry old dogs and the word "y'all."

But don't get me wrong - I'm not against religion. I think it can be incredibly meaningful and freeing, just as long as it isn't used to justify hatred - as long as it doesn't do harm to another human being. The problem is living in my little Southern town, all the oppressive aspects of the Bible are brought to life and inflicted upon everyone, even if some people don't happen to believe in Jesus.

A good example of this is the Christian flag debacle that occurred in King last Autumn. What happened is a person realized the Christian flag at a public park was unauthorized and requested it'd be taken down. As you can imagine, the public fell to pieces. Miniature Christian flags pinned to automobiles flapped through the wind; thousands of bumper stickers proudly proclaiming "Fly the Kings Flag!" were sold; and one church even bought a Christian flag the size of a school bus and placed it in the church's lawn. There was a riot, too - the Christians swarmed through the town of King like angry hornets, spreading the love of God all over the place in the form of $1.99 flags and some poster board.

That month North Carolinians probably spent enough money on Christian flags and stickers to feed the homeless for a year. If someone went into Gullions looking for a flag, they'd more than likely be out of luck because an earlier crowd of raging Christians had already been there. Kurt Vonnegut's quote about Americans constructing their lives from things they find in gift shops always comes to mind whenever I think about the drama of last Autumn (that still hasn't entirely fizzled out yet; you still see stray flags and stickers here and there).

The conflicting feelings I spoke of earlier all arise outside of the churches - out on the street, at dinners, or when I'm enjoying the general warmth and beauty of the South. A few weeks ago I was in downtown Mount Airy with Hallie eating ice cream, and a man walked by and said how good it looked. He smiled the whole time.

Whenever I go to Peggy and Willie's house, who live right down the road from me, they never let me go back home without having a home-cooked meal. I sit at the table and Peggy makes me cornbread and Sara makes me Kool Aid and we all eat together. Whenever I was younger Sara and I would spend the afternoon exploring the woods and sneaking on top of tobacco barns. Combined we had over 200 acres to run and pick berries and swim and get lost. My feet are still tough enough to walk barefoot for miles.

And these aren't stray occurrences; where I live, this friendliness - this caring - is the norm. Say what you want about my little piece of North Carolina, but you can never call this place insincere or unfriendly. This is the South that I love and will take with me everywhere.

The problem is that I know if I were different - perhaps if I were gay or Hispanic or African-American or just extremely weird, a large majority of the people I love so much would treat me differently. And the last thing I want to do is spend my life benefitting from the oppression of others. The same Bible that tells them to be kind is the same Bible that justifies their hatred of people who aren't exactly like them. But I'm not speaking of all Christians, just those who use God to practice intolerance, which sadly makes up the majority in these parts.

But what is there to do about it? I could leave, but that wouldn't change the fact that every Sunday more little children are scared into Christianity for fear of spending eternity with flames and a devil they probably imagine to have red eyes and a pitchfork.

Arguing and debates certainly don't help, either. Since the Bible is the supreme law of the land, generally speaking, a Christian's interpretation of how its message should be handled overrides any sort of logic and reason. And to me, forcing ideas of secularism onto people of religion is just as intolerant as religious people forcing their ideas on others.

So, essentially, I'm stuck. Usually when writing, a solution comes to mind, but that just didn't happen this time. I feel guilty for adoring the South and benefitting from such harsh ideas, but leaving would not change those ideas one bit. But whenever I think about this for awhile, I come to the same conclusion Kurt Vonnegut came to when a woman asked him if she should bring a baby into this horrible, horrible world: "I would say it is still a wonderful thing. What makes life worth living are the saints I meet -- they can be long-time friends or someone I meet on a street. They find a way to behave decently in an indecent society."

For now the only solution is to wait - to look for more people like Hallie who believe it's possible to be tolerant and religious, who would strive to be a good person even if God never told them to. The only thing I know to do is to keep enjoying the warmth and passion of the south and to continue to stand up for those who aren't as free to do so.