Image: Mummified baby snake corpse. Ever since I mentioned it in last week's post, everyone has been clamoring to see the snake photo. It is unclear if one of the dogs brought it inside or if I tracked it in on the bottom of my shoe.
One of the reasons I find writing this blog difficult is that I am a very private person, and this form of writing requires significant self-disclosure. When writing fiction, what my characters do and think does not need to reflect what I do and think. As I've said before, I treat my characters as real people, responsible for their own feelings and actions. They are their own selves, after all. When writing this blog, it is just me. And this post is a lot of me
I am a man of faith. I doubt many people who know me casually would think that to be true. While my faith is deep and abiding, I don't wave a flag about, nor do I think of faith as some kind of performative art. My faith informs my values, just as my values inform my faith. While some people may see my faith and my values as a contradiction, they are deeply intertwined, and together they create the core of my being.
I am also politically very liberal. Some folks would assuredly call me 'woke.' The last time I supported a republican candidate for office was Richard Nixon in 1968, when I was seven. We actually had a carved pumpkin on our porch that said Nixon. All of the 3rd graders in my school were huge Nixon supporters. I was crushed when I learned that my dad--the man who carved the Nixon pumpkin-- was going to vote for Hubert Humphrey. Just devastated. I wondered what was wrong with him. In our classroom vote Nixon won in a landslide. 1968 was also the last time that I believed the world was inherently fair and that hard work would reward everyone equally.
As I listen to the political pundits talk about what democrats need to change as a result of the 2024 election, I am very troubled by what I hear. "Woke is broke," people are saying. Move away from identity politics. Change your positions. Change your values. The litany goes on.
I won't change my faith just to appeal to others. Just as I don't wave my faith on a flag, I will not hide it. I also won't change my values to win an election or gain power. Woke is broke, they say? If woke means seeing the inherent dignity and value of all people, then woke ain't broke. If woke means fighting hierarchies of value that lift one group of people over another, then woke ain't broke. If woke means seeing the systemic inequality that exists in our power structures, then woke ain't broke. If woke means acknowledging the horror of slavery and the treatment of the indigenous tribes that lived here before europeans, then woke ain't broke. If woke means accepting science over ignorance, then woke ain't broke. If woke means realizing that climate change is real, and harmful, then woke ain't broke.
I guess I just mean that woke ain't broke.
And hate and racism and misogyny are not values. Lawmakers in Ohio have sponsored a bill that would make it illegal for public universities to allow prospective students to list their preferred pronouns on their college application. What? Ohio has a k-12 funding system that was declared unconstitutional in 1997 and has never been appropriately fixed, and our lawmakers are legislating pronouns? And they think woke is broke?
That is a contradiction too big to understand.
Win a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire: I work with Reader's Favorite on the Kindle book giveaway. If you go to readersfavorite.com/book-giveaway you can sign up for the monthly giveaway. You can scroll through the list of giveaways (over 500 each month) or sort the list by title or author to find Love: a novel of grief and desire and put your name in for this month's drawing. Good luck!
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