On September 12, 1960 then-senator John F. Kennedy addressed the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. And I quote, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic appellate can tell the president, should he be Catholic, how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners how to vote. Where no church or no church school is granted any public funds or political preference and no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the presidents who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him. I believe in an America that is officially either Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish, where no public official either requests nor accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, The National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastic source. When no religion body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is an act against all.”

“America is a Christian nation!” The war cry heard from the right side of the room is indeed, a lie spread by people known as Christian Revisionists, slightly akin to history revisionists who are attempting to rewrite history. The men responsible for building the foundation of the United States were men of The Enlightenment, not men of Christianity. Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. Furthermore, America’s founding fathers were Deists, who did not believe everything written by man in the bible was true. They were Freethinkers who relied on their reason, on human history and from the lessons learned therein, not their faith. In fact, IF the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation, the Constitution would clearly and with no question, state such. I challenge anyone to find where it might be written in the our Constitution that claims: ‘The United States is a Christian Nation’, or anything remotely close to that. In fact, show us the words ‘Jesus Christ, Christianity, Bible, Creator, Divine or God’ anywhere in the US Constitution. Nowhere in the Constitution is religion even mentioned except in EXCLUSIONARY terms. In fact, when the Founders authored our nations Constitution, they specified that “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to an office or public trust under the United States (Article 6, section 3). Though radical in its day, this provision gave equal citizenship to believers and non-believers alike. They wanted to ensure that no religion could rise up and lay claim as being the official, national religion, such as had happened in England.

Post 9/11 I saw more flags hanging from porches then ever before or since. Americans claim to have a strong sense of right and wrong, and a bigger claim to patriotism, so much so that they are willing to throw their basic rights away. Molalla, if you want to be a patriotic as you claim, take a few moments away from the bucking bulls and the reality television and open a history book. Get religion out of all politics!

Get your religion out of my and my families lives! I vote pro-choice and pro-environment and I believe that your beliefs should not hinder my friends from marrying. Period.

Recently I saw a bumper-sticker that puts it into perfect perspective:

Religion is like a penis. It’s fine to have one. It’s fine to be proud of it. But please don’t whip it out in public and start waving it around. And PLEASE don’t shove it down my children’s throats.

A cancer has attacked our national character. If we’ve any hope of surviving our own future, this must be redressed. Our symptoms are so blatant that we’ve grown complacent. We only roll our eyes at the double talk and mixed messages we receive daily. Back in the late 80s when I first came upon the scene of adulthood, I was met with competing creeds: Nancy Regan was telling me to, “Just Say No” while Nike urged me to, “Just Do It”. I was told not to judge lest I be judged, then I was scorned for walking my own path. I discovered early on that there are two versions of America: one we sell to outsiders, and one we live with day-to-day. Problem is, one doesn’t match the other. We speak out one side of our mouths, boasting of our supreme morals and ethics, while acting out in the contrary. Actions speak louder than words.

When the first version of President Bush took us into the Middle East with Operation Desert Storm, I joined my fellow tree-hugging, dirt worshipping, peace mongers marching in the streets of Portland chanting, “No blood for oil!”

The opposition came at me red-faced and screaming. “This has nothing to do with oil! Our troops are over there to protect your freedom!”

I was willing to entertain their perspective. Then I accepted it. Okay, so if this on-going war is about protecting American’s rights, then shouldn’t we behave as such?

The Occupy Movement is case in point. Regardless of where your opinions fall regarding Occupy, the fact remains that US citizens are dying on foreign soil, coming home in body bags and for what? So that peaceful protestors all over the country speaking out against the regime can sit in huddled masses to protect themselves from over zealous agents with canisters of pepper spray? How was systematically attacking American citizens, infringing on their first amendment rights to peacefully assemble or their rights to free speech, honoring the fallen and those still fighting? United States Marine Corps. Sgt. Shamar Thomas from Roosevelt, NY came home after his latest fourteen month tour in Afghanistan, to go toe-to-toe with the NYPD to make his point. Most of Sgt. Thomas’s family fought or are still fighting over there so that his fellow New Yorkers could stand in protest. (Worth the time to YouTube the video).  Too many of our military men and women have paid the ultimate price to protect our rights, so how, America, can we sit idly by and let those rights and freedoms be systematically stripped from us? There is no honor in that!

But this issue goes far beyond Occupy. We tout ourselves as a nation above reproach. We believe ourselves the example set for others to follow but the truth is we’ve degraded ourselves. America has devolved into something our Forefathers would be ashamed of. I still hold great hopes for America in the coming months. I believe we can pull it together, stop practicing cafeteria-style politics, and when referencing the Constitution or religion, use ALL the words, not just those that are self-serving. America, you’re coming out of your stupor, your finding your voices and demanding change!

I believe America can walk her talk but its going to take each and every one of us to stand up – together, for the highest good -and do the right thing. We don’t all need to worship the same way, love the same way or even live the same way. It’s our diversity that is our strength. The time for (R)evolution is now; a revolution of the heart and mind through love, understanding, common sense and above all, with peaceful integrity.

So when I look at you and say, “Happy Solstice”, what I’m really saying is “I recognize you as a fellow human being and we are occupying the same rock hurtling through space and I wish you a fantastic tomorrow. May the sun’s return heap blessing upon your home.”

At seven years old this made a sort of distorted sense. At 43 I understand the rules and objective of the board game but it makes no sense to me as it applies to reality. I did finally learn to play the game. I became ruthless and greedy, perfected my acquisition strategy by buying up everything I could get my hands on, effectively kicking my siblings to the cardboard curb. But after I defeated the other players and the game was over, all that wonderful multicolored money, all those coveted properties and condos went back into the box. All those pretend possessions weren’t really mine to begin with. Looking back I can see the lesson in that game.

We spend our lives focused on what we don’t have, not on what’s right in front of us. As a society we’ve bought into the game; we scramble to obtain regardless of who we trample in the process. We build oversized homes with oversized closets in which we stuff all our possessions yet we feel we must still get more. Our material possessions become our personal identity. Society has taught us that greed and acquisition, taking whatever we want from whomever we want, our portfolios and fancy cars – this how life is to be lived. But everything we gather, all those things we clutch and horde will eventually go back into the box. In the end we will lose it all because we can’t take them with us.

When the thrill of the acquisition wears off, and it will wear off, then what? Where has the road of greed, paved on the backs of the less fortunate, brought you? Will you still remember what really matters?

Back in the spring of 2005 my family lost our home to a fire. We lost everything. Nobody could understand why I wasn’t falling apart, marveled at my outlook when I explained to them that though we had lost everything, we hadn’t really lost anything. Our family survived this tragedy because we had each other.

A community of strangers stepped forward to support my family at this time and I was blown away by their generosity. Up until that point I’d never given myself a chance to get to know this community of strangers. One gentleman wrote us a check for $5. When I share this experience, when I get to the part about the $5 check, I see the question in people’s eyes: ‘what is $5 going to help?’ I then go on to explain that this man could have easily not given us anything. I imagined that he needed that $5 far more than we did but he gave it away to us. It was that moment that made me decide to let go of my very lucrative private practice in Tualatin and relocate the Living Spirit Healing Center to my new hometown, because I discovered in this small, backwoods town that people care and I wanted to care back.

We’re in this game, the human experience, together but the rules have changed. Regardless of our differing outlooks, beliefs, sexual orientations and political leanings, the new rules to the game are simple: we must strive to see ourselves in each other. Nothing separates me from you, from that guy down the road, or the homeless man living under the bridge. Where we once fought to acquire, now we must fight to survive; we must take care of each other. This is the new human experience, poised on the threshold of an advancing Golden Age. We can do this America; we can survive the coming global and economic tides because we have each other.

We can. We will. We must.