Soapbox

A day or two ago, Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake. While much of the world rushes to help, a predictable group sought to take advantage of the situation.
I"m not talking about the few corrupt locals who will undoubtedly try to sell donated relief supplies to starving, desperate people: I'm talking about people who already have everything, and always need just a little bit more.

"True Story" he says from his pulpit
and shakes his head
and smiles that smile that does not ever, quite reach
his cold, reptilian eyes.
"Those people" only got what they had coming.
Their suffering, while most unfortunate,
is simply just retribution for their different values and their unholy lives.
Payback can be a bitch, huh?

In another type of pulpit another type of preacher assures us
that anyone different than him who wants to help
really just want s to put the welfare of "Those people"
above that of decent, normal, right-thinking Americans like himself.

Today, "those people" are the people of Haiti
squatting in the rubble of their ruined houses,
digging with their bare hands to try to locate their entombed loved ones,
out of the frying pan of misery into the fire of utter agony.
Before that it was the poor in New Orleans,
drowning, starving as the waters rose
and the president waved from overhead.
And before that, the people of New York City,
wailing in disbelief as the ashes of life as they had known it
floated down from overhead.
They got what they had coming to them. They should have known better.
They should have been better. More like me.

It is a true story
that when you have never been hungry or uneducated,
when you have not grown up in a world that offers few options and little hope,
it's easy to be contemptuous and smug
about people who never seem to get ahead.
It is a true story
that when you have only ever known wealth and privilege,
when you were born into a culture of unlimited possibilities…
when you have never known true adversity
it is easy to imagine that you have somehow risen above it
by dint of hard work and superior virtue
when, in fact, you were born with most of what you have now
already in your hands.
Those who congratulate themselves the loudest for climbing the mountain
are usually the ones who were born on the summit.

It is a sad, true story
that when you allow yourself to believe that you are holy and wise,
that you are granted infallibility through the infallibility of your God,
then it's easy to see anyone who doesn't make the same "wise" choices,
live the same "holy" life that you do as unholy…
…justly punished.

And when you have a microphone to speak with
and millions who blindly follow your every word
I guess its easy to blame those who  aren't like you-
the feminists, abortionists, Muslims, athiests…
It's easy to blame the welfare queens, the liberals and the homosexuals
for every hurricane and tornado
every bomb that explodes and earthquake that levels,
every flood, disease and injustice.
It's easy to label  misery and suffering a just punishment for the wicked
when you have never had to suffer yourself-
because that proves that you are virtuous, doesn't it?

It is also a true story
that the self-righteous men
who chuckle and rub their hands in ill-disguised glee at the pain of others
because they find in it a fresh opportunity to castigate and blame-
who believe it makes them look taller
when others are writhing at their feet,
these people and the smug, snake-oil of a religion they pedal,
be it spiritual or political in nature-
they are the very evil they decry in others!
They are the sin they lament in the world.

Preacher, look to thy own heart before you condemn the soul of others.
The devil wears many guises, as you are quick to remind us
and sometimes he wears thousand dollar suits
and speaks the love of God
with brimstone in his throat.

Do you remember?
Do you remember us
sitting in twos and threes and fours
cross-legged, on the floor of your bedroom,
under the tree in the neighbor's back yard,
among the shelves at the library,
in my dorm room,
talking about our plans and wishes and dreams?

Do you remember
when we really believed that we could make the world a better place
just by loving one another better than our parents had,
by seeing things with our clear, unjaded eyes
and then finding a way to tell the world what we saw?
Do you remember
when we all believed that love really could be forever,
and so we held on to each other tightly
as if the covalent bond we shared
might one day spread, reach critical mass
and spark a reaction that could change the world
if we just didn't let go?

But of course, we had to let go.

 I remember those as the most potent times of our lives,
not because we were young
but because we really believed
in ourselves, in a future with limitless possibilities
and in the power of our own dreams.

I remember- for how could I forget?-
when we sat around campfires on clear summer nights,
forever friends,
talking about love and pain, hope and fear
and how we could fix what was wrong with the world
if only the world would listen.
We wove together our words and tears,
love and laughter
with the pop and crack of the flames,
the shriek of cicadas
the pungent smoke in our faces,
the flash of firelight in our dream-filled eyes
and the passion of our convictions.

And so we combined our elements:
earth, air, fire and faith,
our impassioned gestures the sigils and signs of conjuration
as we implored the universe to listen…
and the flames, dancing upward
and the smoke, rising upward
and our dreams, flying upward
among the swirling sparks,
circling, climbing, up to the waiting stars
to join the heat of a billion other visions dispatched
from campfires and dorm rooms and back yards
of a different, better, more love-filled future.

Maybe the stars are our wishes.
What if the lights we see tonight
are the dreams we dreamed as children,
winking and sparkling above us
igniting the cold vault of heaven-
the light of all our dreams streaming across the vastness of space
at the speed of utter faith?
Perhaps it takes so long for even dreams to come back from heaven
that by the time our dreams return to us, fulfilled,
we no longer believe in dreams.
And so they remain suspended forever above us,
unable to come home.

But maybe, somehow,
all those abandoned dreams out there really have changed something
and the universe is a better place because of our love
and we just don't know it.

Do you remember
when we dreamed the stars
and they came to be:
our selves, fulfilled,
a better world,
a love made real-

just impossible, now for us to hold?