"Hey Colleen! HEY! Stand here with us. Something really cool is about to happen." (Observe how they wouldn't just TELL me what was going to happen, they had to spring it on me, like a trap. It was giving Hun-trying-to-sneak-a-pyramid-scheme-past-me-energy.)
I 100% would've blown them off, too, and told them I had to get to class (cuz what cool thing could possibly be happening around a flag pole at 7am?) BUT they had weaponized my crush against me. This was my first gay crush (he was gay, not me) in a series of five, truly debilitating gay crushes that would carry on throughout my college career. (Obviously another topic for another blog post.) The first, (and definitely the most obvious.) However, as a sixteen year old in the 90s, he was neither out, nor had I yet to develop my razor sharp "gay-dar' which was going to need a LOT of honing apparently, but after all that I've been through, trust me, it is now finely HONED.
Anyway, I was just thrilled when we all circled up and started holding hands. Eeeek! I was holding my crush's hand! But then the praying began... Praying!? I was so confused. Wasn't there a separation of church and state? And why was one of the coolest girls in school practically weeping and speaking in tongues? I looked around me to see if anyone else was clocking how awkward this experience was, but their eyes were screwed shut tightly as they swayed back and forth and started to sing some shit that definitely wasn't a Catholic hymn, because I didn't know it! Toto, we were no longer in Kansas...
I started panicking internally and scanning for the nearest exit. Would anyone notice if I just slipped out and casually re-joined the hands of the people on either side of me to each other? It would be like that Homer Simpson meme where he just fades into the hedge... No, that wasn't going to work. People were giving personal testimony to Jesus now. Goddamnit, I was legitimately stuck, praying around a flagpole, AND I was skipping class to do it. God, I better not get in trouble for these shenanigans.
Afterwards, I made a beeline straight to my keyboarding (typing? technology? What was the PC term for that class back in those days?) teacher and explained everything, including how I was held hostage against my will, hoping that she, (like Jesus,) would take mercy upon my soul. But alas, she informed me that I would, indeed, have to make up everything that I missed from class that morning. (Don't do me any favors here, Jesus.)
There were A LOT of people at the flag pole that morning, and most surprisingly, many of them were "cool." There were members of the drill team (my school's version of cheerleaders.) I was shooketh. What was this trend emerging all around me that I was just now noticing? Was it JESUS!? WWJD bracelets and t-shirts were popping up all over the place (What Would Jesus Do.) The drill team girls were attending some extreme church in which they were told to throw everything into the fire that took them further away from God. A boy threw in his letterman jacket, another one threw in his entire CD collection; a girl threw in all of her Seventeen and YM magazines. (The horror!)
But honestly, I was flabbergasted. Even CYM attendance at MY church (the lame Catholics) boomed from 12 to 80. (I wasn't part of those numbers, as I had long since forgone that scene.) I was more interested in the backlash movement that inevitably started between the "Jesus freaks," or "bible thumpers" and the rest of us. A girl painted a prayer portrait in art class that said- "It's hard to fall when you're already on your knees." A boy decided to spoof her and painted- "It's hard to throw a baseball when you're lying on your stomach." God bless the art teacher who thought it was funny to display them side-by-side in the art showcase, so I got a good chuckle walking past every morning on my way to biology.
A fight broke out when an accusation of- "Excuse me, Michael, but I think you need to take a moment to consider What Would Jesus Do!?" was indignantly declared during math class. (Apparently Michael was being a dick?) "Uhh nothing, cuz he's totally dead!" Sick burn, Bro. High fives all around.
All of this, suffice to say- when the great religious wars of 1998 descended upon Juneau-Douglas High School, I was not on the Christian side. Maybe it was because when my neighbor would pick me up on the side of the road (yes, I hitch-hiked to school my senior year) if she was running late, she would start driving erratically and yell- "the Lord is really testing me today!" Regardless, I just found all of this... Strange and off-putting, shall we say?
And this evangelical behavior has just continued to go further and further off the rails, becoming more and more hypocritical as time has gone on, and we've descended into a(nother) Trump presidency- until the lines aren't even blurred anymore about which side is bad, and which is good. I think it's pretty clear who actually "loves thy neighbor," and it ain't the Christians... If you take this post as a metaphor- you can accuse my side of being judgmental, but we're not the ones joining a cult of thought and throwing entirely valuable systems into a fire, and just blowing stuff up willy-nilly. You might think you're good, because you're picking people up off the side of the road, and that's Christ-like, but keep in mind, that your other behavior is still dangerous. Don't drive erratically; don't drive that car off the side of the road with yourself, AND the other person inside of it. And I feel like that's what this administration is trying to do- just take us all down.
Ok- that last paragraph went in a weird and political direction, so I promise to keep the next couple of posts (not necessarily lighter- this is a blog about my spiritual journey, after all) but free of politics. Can't promise too much more than a couple, though. After all, this is the world we live in...
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