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This is my response to the post sent to me this
afternoon by a church group trying to pack the polls on USA Today. REH
Subject: Re: TO KEEP "UNDER GOD" IN THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE OR NOT
When I was in the fourth grade in Picher,
Oklahoma we had people from many nations and religions who came to work in the
mines. I remember that the government made it OK for Baptist and
other Protestant Ministers to come into the schools to give sermons and try to
tempt, mostly through guilt, non-Christian family's children away from the faith
of their fathers. There was one place however that we all shared and
that was the pledge of Allegiance.
My father was the Superintendent of Schools and my
mother taught business in this exceptional little school on the state line of
Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Because it was Indian Land the
normal separation of church and state did not apply and Indian religion was
against the law from 1883 to 1978 in Picher. It was alright
for Christian Ministers to proselytize in the schools that contained Catholics,
Jews, Traditional Indian religions and people from other religions that were too
afraid to admit it because of the prejudice.
Anyone could work and die in the mines whatever
religion and we had them all. There were only two times that
the Minister's came in that I remember, and they were both Baptist.
I think there was some complaints and Dad just stopped it after that, but it did
separate us and it felt terrible although we were too loyal to our parents to
admit it. It all began in Mrs. Snyder's fourth grade
class.
At that time the Congress for whatever reason
decided to go on a pious binge of religiosity at the time when we were lying
about so much that was happening including Nuclear fallout from tests on our own
people. Watching the Bin Laden tapes last night I remembered
the dead sheep in Nevada that the government denied in the 1950s,
the LSD experiments on service personnel that caused an American soldier who
didn't know what was happening to jump out of the window of a hotel in New York
City. When it came before the Supreme Court the Court said that it
was OK because soldiers didn't have the same protections under the law as
civilians. I was in the military when that came
down. You can imagine what we thought of that, since a large
percentage of the military was still under the draft. But we
have very short memories about these things.
Well back to Mrs. Snyder's fourth
grade. Religion never was an issue in spite of what the Minister's
preached. We played ball and Mickey Mantle meant more to us than
church anyway especially since he was from the same reservation as we
were. "One Nation Indivisible, with liberty and justice for
all." That was a promise and we were proud of
it. I remember the first time I said "under God", it was not
such a big deal to the children of Christian families in the room but there was
a different feel after that.
Somehow there was US and THEM.
One nation was no longer INDIVISIBLE. When I got
to High School was when they had those evangelists come into the school to try
to convert the children of all of those "OTHERS." The
divided ones. It took an American History Class and a very
fine Minister from Virginia in a church where I was directing music to make me
feel clean about this again. The University of Tulsa taught me
about the Founding Fathers and Deism while Dr. Robert Whitten at Westwood
Baptist Church in Springfield, Va. taught me how the Baptists had resisted John
Adams and his state church in the Constitutional Convention and promised to deny
him his seat as a delegate unless he dropped that State Church (His was Anglican
Church of England, Henry the VIII's church) idea.
That was the reason that the Cherokees were
comfortable with the Baptists of that ilk. They were the one's
who fought the government, fought slavery, and walked the trail of tears to
Oklahoma with the people. Worchester, a Methodist, suffered
jail, fought in the Supreme Court and won and could have prevented the
Trail but was convinced not to "break up the Union" and so didn't follow through
although he is honored as well. But it was One Nation
Indivisible! Not one nation under the English term for what
Jesus called Elohim or Yowa.
Let me tell you one more story if you are not
already ticked off enough at your old uncle. I was leading a
ceremony at the end of a conference on religion and violence held at a Catholic
Convent and attended by people from six of the world's religions including Islam
and Judaism. The end of the conference was a prayer for peace
on the part of all of the people whatever their religion. The Rabbi
had made a point of talking about the defeat of paganism by Judaism not
realizing that he was speaking of my faith. At the end they made a
ceremony with water and fire. Water for purification and fire
for transformation. Each person took a little of a sacred herb and
placed it on the fire with the smoke representing a visualization of the release
of that prayer. The Rabbi came late so he didn't know about us and I
took no offense.
Anyway I was singing a song that had the words
Yoweh Haiya repeated many times. After the ceremony he
came to me and asked the meaning of those words. We don't talk about
that so I said that it was vocables which on one level it is.
He said that in Hebrew it meant God is One and I looked him in the eye and said
"it does to us as well." But the word for us is not in
English but in the ancient tongue of our ancestors.
Gradually I began to leave the pledge since it was not about me but about the
ancient meanings of the "god" word in English and all of the history of that
word with its Kings and peasants, Empires and murder.
After 1978 I was free to follow the path that the
Creator gave me while prior to that, the path had to be put through a surrogate
the church. If you worshipped you had to do it through the
dominant legal source or go to jail for praying. I did pray in
Picher, alone and in the old way, in one part of my back yard even when I
didn't understand why or how. Later the Creator led me to the
American Indian Community House in New York and then to the Sundance and back to
the path of my ancestors. The Sundance was my connection to
the people of Picher, the Quapaw who are the River Sioux. Each
step led me to the path that carried me to my faith. There was a
hole in the tapestry of America before that and we are filling
it. We are not a stew to be cooked but a beautiful picture, a
masterpiece and without us America would be incomplete and just another
bland culture filled with images looking back at herself.
Cousin and Uncle REH
----- Original Message -----
SENT TO ME THIS AFTERNOON,
Subject: KEEP
"UNDER GOD" IN THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
> > Please go to the web site and vote "NO" today! > > USA Today is taking a vote on whether the words "Under God" > > should be removed from the pledge of allegiance. > > You can vote by going to the following web site: > > http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/06/27/pledge-hold.htm > > Thanks and please... keep passing this one along > |
