If I Believed In God Part 1: Camp Nelson

     My grandfather, Duane Damron, recently turned 80.  At his charming birthday party, I cried as my family and I sang Buck Owens songs with him, loud and giggling in his house perched high on a Bakersfield hilltop. The gifts his life has given me danced along in my mind to to the sweet melody of my singing family. One echoing over and over in my soul... my Papa taught me to love nature.  Not remotely a conscientious environmentalist, my Papa's fondness for the Earth is one of tradition and divine respect.  My Papa and Grandma Frances raised only boys and bought a simple cabin high in the Sequoia National Forest as soon as they could afford it, a wilderness untamed enough to wear out the energy of three hyper little boys. As my divine luck would have it, my cousins and I ventured to this same haven every year of our own childhoods.  We caught salamanders, fell in rivers, buried ourselves in snow, and trekked mud through the carpets of the cabin for years... all the while I fell in quiet love with nature.

     If I believed in God... this God would inspire his followers to recognize his existence in these quiet places and require of them the prioritization of its reverence and conservation. If God didn't intend for humans to marvel at and fight for nature... how can we possibly justify the beauty that exists on this planet? I have to believe the Yosemite Valley and the peaks of Patagonia serve more of a purpose than to remind us that God is talented... they must be a call to action: to seek to make God's "will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven".  If Yosemite is God's will... then damn I'm all for it.

If I believed in God, I would believe that every time a Christian supports the compromise of nature for the idol of financial gain... his heart breaks.  

If I Believed in God... The Preface

For the first time in years, my brother and I live in the same house.  I’m kind of giddy about it.  We’ve spent countless nights over the course of the past few weeks sitting on our parents’ patio late into the night. Illuminated by candles and the moon, we’ve drank one too many glasses of wine, sang songs way too loudly, and reacquainted ourselves with each other as adults. This moment in time feels like a very intentional blessing as I sense his life is about to transition into something big and magical, making these evenings together so sacred. 

Where I’m chatty, Cooper selects his words carefully. While all of my thoughts tend to grow into passionate lengthy run on sentences of which I can’t quite control the speed, Cooper speaks softly and more selectively.  He’s the kind of guy that when he decides to enter into a conversation, people really focus. So when Cooper told me at our most recent patio party that I should reconsider how I approach my spirituality… I cried because I’m sappy and I agreed because I respect him. 

I resigned myself from Christianity a few years ago. I haven’t been to church since, I haven’t read the Bible, and I haven’t prayed in the way I tried pretty desperately to for the first eighteen years of my life.  However, I still sense within myself a love for an admittedly nameless God, mostly manifested in an overwhelming sense of love and responsibility for the universe and for humanity.  My resignation from the Christian faith had less to do with God though, and more to do with people.  

I hate offending people.  I have an intense respect for religion and appreciate how sacred and intense those beliefs are to people to whom I owe everything.  Hence, when I realized my beliefs about God and scripture had potential to seem combative or contrary… I decided to separate myself altogether. I wanted to give people permission to dismiss me.  If I wasn’t a part of their group, people I had potential to offend could stop listening to me. I desperately wanted that freedom because I needed reprieve.  The life of a rumored atheist seemed like a warm and relaxing cave in which to dwell for a while. 

However, my brother has summoned me from my years-long vacation.  There is a chance, I suppose, that the thoughts about God that plagued me as a child were planted in me for a purpose: to spark up a freewheelin’ conversation about the divine with the people I love, to encourage vulnerable discourse around patio tables about faith and fear. Our lives are pretty short so we might as well take that risk… I’ll go first. 

To force myself to stick with it I’ve thought in advance of a few perhaps not politically correct beliefs I hold about God.  I plan on latching onto one per week… a little blog series if you will. I’m pretty apprehensive but… here goes nothin’. Each week I’ll introduce the God I could commit myself to, the potential aspects of a possible Creator that seem the most beautiful to me.  Forgive any guaranteed accidental blasphemy… we’re all just little specks searching for truth to love and I for one can use all the help I can get. 

Listen

As cliche as this may sound, I am the kind of person that regularly asks myself “what are we doing here?” And by that worn out question I imply the obvious… why are humans… here? Is there a reason?  If so where can I, Crosby Damron, find it? This uninvited question has sat quite annoyingly at the base of all of my anxieties since I was around six. I was given an answer when I was young: “We are here to glorify God”… but that didn’t assuage my fears. 

As I matured and sought comfort among seemingly likeminded people, I encountered a new answer.  These people told me that humans are not here for any sacred reason, that we are a biological accident, and that ultimately all intelligent people accept this.  I was shocked to find however, that still… I wasn’t satisfied. I tend to find that when my mind encounters truth, relative as that may be, it feels at rest. I now use this resting sensation as some kind of truth radar: If I feel peace, my mind’s truth must be near. Here, then, is the closest I have come.. the “purpose of life” in which I feel most at home and most honest: we are here to build and experience relationships. Life altering. This purpose, though, is not a passive means to float through life unfettered. The conscious cultivation of relationships is a MASSIVE responsibility. Hence I introduce to the world my new goal: conversation sensitivity. 

My junior year of high school I was at friday night football game, reveling in nostalgia I wholeheartedly celebrated.  This particular game took place at a wealthy Catholic school on the opposite side of town.  Sitting amongst my classmates and strangers, my life felt remarkably movie-like.. shallow and easy… a fantasy I often longed for. Just in my periphery, though, I noticed erratic movement, a transient women walking frantically in front of the bleachers.  Intensely emaciated and smoking a cigarette, the heavily made up woman mumbled to herself as she made her way erratically in front of the crowd.  Not surprisingly, the people around me began to chat quite uninhibitedly about the spectacle. “What is she doing here?” “Smoking on a high school campus?” The woman’s appearance, her movements, her indecipherable chattering… nothing was off limits from the small talk of strangers. It was then that I looked down at the cheerleaders and caught the eye of my panicked best friend.  This woman was her estranged mother and she was terrified. In this moment I powerfully realized the true weight of our conversations.  Many of the people I heard taking about my friend’s mother were close friends of her daughter, entirely unaware of the heartbreaking connection, and only an earshot away from making an uncomfortable situation devastating. I am entirely aware of how many times I have perhaps been the talker in similarly heavy situations, loving the sound of my own voice more than I actively love the humans around me. 

Our words are so very powerful.  They can and do unavoidably change the lives of those around us as well as ultimately the entire world we live in. I feel it is so important then, that we consciously practice using our words to invite more humanity into our individual lives. 

For me, this starts with trying tirelessly to adopt the belief that.. chances are… the next person I meet’s life probably looks nothing like mine. He or she probably grew up in a different neighborhood, with different family structure, different religious teachings, different political beliefs, different taste in music, different social boundaries, a different human experience. Under this assumption.. it becomes intensely important to avoid killing a potential relationship before it starts with ostracizing phrases. With every utterance of:

“I would never…” 

“I don’t understand people who…” 

“I hate…” 

“I am against…” 

I simply increase the possibility of convincing a potential friend that I am incapable of accepting him or her, informing them passively of what they cannot confess to me. 

The next lesson I am learning in conversation sensitivity is one of diction. In literature, diction implies the specific choice of words by an author to evoke a certain tone. Day to day life can show our word choice informing strangers of our “tone” dangerously accurately. In potentially controversial conversations our word choice is capable of inadvertently informing others that there is no need for discussion. I truly value the opinions of others too highly to allow myself to (however accidentally) dismiss a conversation before it begins. Time with other humans is simply too sacred. Imagine, yourself discussing the ethics of abortion with a very new acquaintance. In your first sentence, an immediate statement of opinion, you use the word “murder”.  It would be alarmingly clear to your acquaintance exactly how you felt about abortion, after the utterance of one word, and the conversation has either escalated to an argument or has ended. A tragic loss of a potential meaningful conversation that could have exposed light on the intricacies of life. Similarly, racial, ethnic, and sexual slurs used casually, jokingly among a group of familiar faces run the risk of hitting someone sharply, isolating a newcomer inevitably. Is it worth it? 

In my day to day life, I am striving to practice conversation sensitivity in ways that are challenging for me. Time in conversation spent laughing, drinking coffee under the stars, crying, and discovering the beauty of being human alongside all kinds of people… convinces me that holding onto each other is worth putting in a bit more effort. 

We owe it to each other. 

Entitlements

     I can see myself, decked out in red white and blue, glitter all over my body, hair slicked back in bump-free pigtails... singing "Proud To Be an American" in an emotional duet alongside my dear friend, Jessica.  A highly patriotic ten year old, I sang along to the good ole' boy America lovin' anthems of Toby Keith and nodded my head to Sean Hannity, memorizing blurbs of Fox News I would proudly recite to my surely bored friends on the play structures of Laurelglen Elementary.  "The problem is entitlements... illegal immigrants and welfare moms and criminals and liberals and atheists... they're all just so 'entitled'.  And that's not what America is about you guys.. it's about hard work and church and the Army and country music."  I'm exaggerating... but I guess here my parents should have speculated I would passionately seek activism, as I've always chased opinions.
     Vocabulary and rhetoric are charged entities I've come to learn, and reflecting on the way your words sound to others can inspire some serious personal revelations. The word 'entitlement' is defined as "the belief that one is deserving of certain privileges".  In high school I became quite obsessed with the application of this word to my own circumstance.. as I heard its synonym thrown around in political debate and my own government class.  What privileges was I born with? What privileges are Americans born with?  And perhaps more importantly... do I believe that I am deserving of these privileges?
     I concluded simply... I am insanely lucky.  I was born in America, a land of relative safety... a nation founded on the principles of human rights.  I realize that millions, perhaps billions, of people are forced to fight for safety from an early age, as their homeland provides them no such comfort.  I was born to parents that planned diligently for my arrival, painstakingly insuring that I would always be fed, sheltered, and loved.  I have seen heartache in my family, but have known the profound peace that comes with the realization that my parents would make any sacrifice for my happiness. I could get fired from my job... my house could burn down... I could be a drug addict... I could have a baby... but I can think of several people who would provide for me unconditionally.  I cannot believe how crazily lucky I am.  I did nothing to deserve this comfort... I inherited it.  It's as if I was given the rarest gift on the day I entered the world.  I've done nothing profoundly noble.  I'm not a hero or a scholar.  I make coffee part time to pay my rent and spend way too much money traveling to Malibu to visit my best friend.
       I know few exceptions to this luck.  Most of my friends were similarly born in America... to families that love them.. however dysfunctional.  We sleep on store bought mattresses, drink clean water from our faucets, and laugh at dumb videos we watch on the Internet. Some of my friends live more luxuriously than others, but even those of us who live pay check to pay check know we can find an easy way to eat our next meal. We are so lucky. I am so lucky. And I have done absolutely nothing I can think of that could inspire me to say "I, Crosby Damron, deserve this."
     The portrait of someone who deserves such a stress-free life is easy for me to paint. She wakes up at five to go to work.  She works over forty hours a week in a crazy, loud, hot kitchen making food for picky customers who are rarely satisfied.  She exits the kitchen for her break sweating, smiling, and laughing.  She never complains, thankful for the opportunity to support her children.  Her personality is magical, known for loving everyone and being beautifully open with her affections.  She has seen far more than her share of fear and heartache, as she fled her home for the promise of a country that would keep her future babies safe.  She has taught herself English piece by piece, and seeks opportunities that will make her speech more fluent.  She lives in fear of deportation, hiding from the government that she hoped would protect her.  Her children attend public school, and she pores over their homework every night, relishing in her own dream that her children lead the lives she blissfully imagines for them. She immigrated here from Mexico and manifests the ideology of the American dream in a way that puts my peers and I to shame.
       If one of us has to be deported... I nominate myself.  My merits for the inheritance of the privileges are painfully unfounded.  If hard work and constant ambition for betterment are stipulations of the American Dream... those of us who have earned our privileges on luck alone have no more right to the entitlements of being an American citizen than those who have snuck across the border.  We simply snuck into hospitals.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
 The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
 Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 If this country can find in its heart to abide by its promise to the fearful of this world... I can possibly find it in my heart to declare once again someday that I am proud to be an American.

 

Vessel

     It's rare that my scatter brained, passionate psyche focuses on anything specific for long.  I have trouble articulating my opinions on politics and religion in serious discussions because my views are lofty... all encompassing... admittedly far from practical.  I try to summarize my mind by repeating "I don't care about money" and "people are inherently good"... but get lost in frustration based on my inability to wrap my bleeding heart around specific talking points... I speculate I just can't bring myself to believe that the human world can be calculated... it's too colorful, too emotional, and far too surprising...and my brain explodes into a vibrant kaleidoscope of thoughts and songs and poems and pictures whenever I try to reach for the tiniest topic.
     However, the past few months I have been harboring a tangible sadness for something quite specific... and I'm grasping and clinging for this sign of temporary clarity.  Whenever articulated fervency strikes I choose to absorb it as a sign of providence, perhaps a lengthy psychological obsession means I have found one of my soul's please.

     80% of United States women claim they "do not like the way they look"

      This may seem superfluous or vain, a far cry from my usual dream of cultural revolution; but self acceptance and learned appreciation for the divine mystery of life are dependent upon one another.  As long as humanity continues to define itself by external stories, we will be forever asleep.  How can we accept each other and learn to cherish the differences that make life on earth so amazing... how can we understand that we depend on each other.. when our culture so rampantly encourages the belief that our bodies, the amazing vehicles that allow our souls the very gift of life, are insufficient?

     So from the deepest parts of me I plead: Women... it's time we stop hating our bodies.

     I've never been one for intentional exercise or purposeful dieting.  I like to ride my bike, do yoga, swim, and play outside but even the thought of running on a treadmill makes me experience phantom side pains.  I've always loved vegetables and simple foods, but I also eat approximately a pint of ice cream a night.  I smoke cigarettes occasionally.  I'm far from the peak of fitness... I get winded running from my car to the front door.  Hence... I don't mean "love your body" in the way society preaches... implying the conscious betterment of our transcendent souls' physical shells.  I mean banish self hatred and fall in love with your body... now.

     I am genuinely heartbroken by the realization of Western society's decision to weave learned dissatisfaction with the female body into our cultural story.  I'm tall and thin and have wiry limbs, never one to struggle with weight or intense body image issues.. but even I... if standing in front of a mirror... choose things about my body to be unhappy with.  Be it my thighs or my skin or my flipper like feet... I catch myself teaching the whispered lessons of society to my reflection.  It's almost an obligation.  I have NEVER had a female friend who is comfortable with every part of her body.  Heart wrenching.

     Fitness magazines, diet plans, low fat alternatives, skinny lattes, SO MANY CHOICES OF FACE WASH, trendy exercise classes, fat girls, skinny girls, cleavage, hair extensions, Pinterest boards for "body envy"... echoing the same tired sentiment over and over, louder and louder... "You as you are, mo matter who you are, no matter how much you weigh, no matter how beautiful you may be... you can be better.  You must be better.  The way you look now should be improved upon.  It's honorable to never be content with your image.  Your body is a temple.. so bettering it is noble work."

     I propose this notion instead: Let's love our "temples" as they are.  Now. Not in the future when wer're skinnier or "healthier".

     If we're honest with ourselves... our obsession with fitness boils down to loving ourselves... just "not the way I look right now."

     As for me I'm done hating the female body.  I'm done with thinking I'm less than ambitious for not seeking to make my physical self "stronger".  I'm happy enough with my ice cream, thank you.  Let's stop thinking women who completely love their bodies are conceited.  Let's stop being uncomfortable with the notion that we're allowed to love ourselves.  Our bodies are miracles... capable of producing life and taking us on adventures all around the world.  We swim, dance, laugh, and make beautiful stories in these beautiful bodies.  I'm all for healthy living, but healthy living starts not with diet changes and working out... but with looking in the mirror and deciding to love your body as it is in this moment... in all its flabby, bony, bumpy glory.

     Challenge yourself to never criticize another woman's body.  The female body is a sacred and sexy miracle... and it's time we stop buying in to the lies that inspire us to do anything less than cherish every inch of ourselves.

The Machine

     Once put under the metaphorical microscope, modern society is fashioned after the workings of a not too complex machine. This machine runs on the fuel of expectations.. we have expectations for what childhood, adulthood, career, success, education, nature, and relationships are supposed to look like.  Consequentially, we are met with unparalleled stress when life doesn't look how the malfunctioning machine assured us it would.  Rebellious children, lying adults, a dwindling career, poverty, natural disasters, failed relationships... are not only reacted to with grief and human understanding... but with shock and malevolent surprise. "I took all the steps, i pushed every button at the time I was told, I watched the conveyor belt moving forward.. then the machine exploded.  How could this happen?"  Our societal machine has Mother Nature down to a science.  Earthquakes can only shake so hard.  Hurricanes can only get so big.  Loss of human life can be controlled and calculated.  When she proves her strength, stretches beyond the boundaries of our machines... she becomes a cold calculated villain.  The nature machine has a glitch.. time for a software update.  A well oiled machine is without surprise.. no discomfort... no guilt.. no suffering... no insecurities.. and no fear.
     Much of our confusion, sorrow, and sense of failure.. stems from the fact that humanity makes a horrible machine.  We react in ways that cannot be predicted, sometimes even surprising ourselves with our strengths and weaknesses.  We seek each others acceptance to the point of violence, lashing out in desperate attempts to be seen.  We love with our whole bodies, in ways deeper than modern science can begin to understand.  Our energies are connected to all of nature, similar I suppose to the parts of a machine, but connected by subconscious understanding of interdependence... a system far more spiritual than mechanical.
     We set up an economy on the machine mentality.. watching graphs of money go up and down on a screen.... as we the buyers and sellers operate our part of the supply and demand machine.. pushing buttons and swiping cards.. doing our duty for the economic computer we depend on.
     We go to schools like factories... learning to fall into our place at the conveyor belt.. pushing products and ideas down the line to be absorbed and sold.
     We fall in love as robots, expecting relationships to be calculated and easy to understand.  If you say this he says this.. if you feel this he feels this... you get married.. you have babies.. you grow old and invest in your retirement... and then you grow old happily and move to a quaint little nursing home.
     The machine hums and moves and progresses and becomes all encompassing... every facet of our lives is fueled by the natural gas of our robotic expectations.
     Then... the machine malfunctions.  We realize not the machine mentality's flaws.. but instead mourn for our own, seeing ourselves as the unique failures for our supposed shortcomings and worthlessness.  We sit in shame as we, the human failure, see our lives as vast disappointment.
     Realize this: humans are beautiful spiritual animals... built with mystery and magic in our blood.  We are destined to live with surprise and fear and rage and love... uninhibited by the bounds of a machine.  Your soul longs for ecstasy, nature, freedom, and mystery.  We make excellent lovers and explorers, but terrible machines.  Own that.
      I made the strange, rather impulsive decision, to postpone school.  I felt the machine underneath the motivations of my life's journey and decided to step back and sit in the quiet.  It's terrifying and I can feel the transitory calm before the revolutionary storm.  But here I am... waiting for the cosmic signs as to how to purpose a life unlimited by my own expectations, and resigning from my duties at the societal factory.  

A Time To Grieve

    I recently was blessed with the opportunity to attend a conference for media professionals seeking to transform the world into a better place through the use of their art... I felt mildly out of my league to put it lightly... but sat quietly in the back for a solid five hours absorbing as much inspiration as my brain could handle. Days later, I find my mind clinging to a brief presentation by artist, Chris Jordan.  Before you read any further, I implore you to look at his work... unbelievably resonant.
     The conference was a blur of mass information: consciousness, transformation, environmental conservation, mental illness, storytelling, money, books... a lot to absorb... however, i find myself dwelling on and retelling to my peers only one statement presented by Jordan.  In the words of Walt Whitman "Whatever satisfies the soul is truth."  If Jordan's one plea to the audience of a thousand has stuck with me so profoundly, I believe my soul has longed for this truth since its birth.  Simply put he implored... "our society needs to grieve."
    Jordan explained that after the Holocaust, German artists used their medium as a catharsis for decades, manifesting the shame of their society onto canvases, sheet music, screens, literature, every artistic medium.  German society acknowledged their human role in mass horriffic loss, looked inward at their conscience, and moved forward together as a united, grieving society.  Germany's people had experienced the darkness that shows itself when a society falls asleep... and in the aftermath of World War Two, they cried together and reflected on what they had done... even those who played a role only in their passivity.  Societies are made up of humans, bringing with it all the fear, insecurities, love, stories, and risk that human nature allows. Germany decided not to run from their dark foundations, and realized that acknowledging darkness in retrospect, is required to move forward into the possibility of light.
     Amidst the chaos that American society has found itself lost in, foundations must be questioned.  Our nation has seen its share of shame.  Violence, mass environmental disregard, unjust wars, enslavement of minorities, failure to see each other as humans, money put on a pedestal... we as humans, must acknowledge our missteps and their horrible consequences.  We cannot pass our shame onto future generations... seeing ourselves and our ancestors in a light of innocence.  We are humans, all of us, and projected innocence of our past does not amount to nobility.
     It is remarkably beneficial to grieve in solidarity with each other, as shared sorrow has the power to connect us in ways that saccharine small talk cannot. I am an eternal optimist for the future... however, the future does not come to us like an impending wall... we create it.  American society has to stop the movement for just a moment and decide that we WILL not be afraid of grief. We must acknowledge that we are a country made up of humans, all the dirt and gore that human implies.  We have made mass mistakes and continue making them every day.  It's time we grieve together for our slaughter of forests and animals.  It's time we grieve together for our acceptance of violence and oppression towards the vulnerable.  It's time we grieve for our failure to see money as nothing more than imaginary numbers on paper.  It's time we grieve for our time of passive sleep.  Grieving is nothing to be afraid of... and we have to do it together.