A Place for Us

It is almost the day of Christ's birth and the world is unfit for His coming yet never needed him more. Tonight, tonight I watched West Side Story and spent most of the two hours weeping.The story is just as relevant today as when Shakespeare first penned its predessesor, Romeo and Juliet.

As Christmas Day approaces the Christian Religious Right rants and raves yet again with hatred. They do not know this is what they are wrailing with, they do not glimpse that hate is their tool. I believe they feel certain that they are protecting their faith. But Christianity needs no protection for it is real, genuine, beyond the grasp of any human end. And so, as I watched a film in which hatred triumphs over love and death is all about I see the world in which I now live memorialized in technicolor and song begging for change from the depths of the writers hearts.

Perhaps I don't make myself clear. The hatred and fear of other faiths and beliefs has led a group of Fundamentalist Christians to use this moment of Our Lord's birth to spew forth the simple fact that they have no understanding of the feast they are celebrarting. The issue, for them, is the increasing lack of the greeting 'Merry Christmas' in our commercial world. One group has even compared the loss of the use of this greeting in a commercial multicultural world as the beginning of a new Nazi regime in America. It is not so.

Merry Christmas is a Christian greeting which may hold no meaning and perhaps even offend those of other beliefs. There is no wrong or evil in understanding and respecting our brothers and sisters differences by choosing to say instead 'Seasons Greetings' or 'Happy Holidays'. Several other faiths celebrate different feasts at this time of year. It is simply good manners - manners and respect for customs that Jesus Himself understood and gave credence to, for He admonished His Mother for asking Him to stray from decorum at the wedding feast at Cannan and he understood the Roman Centurions request not to enter the warriors home, yet still cured his son while praising such faith; He only once strayed from the respect of others and that was in a just rage overturning the money changers tables who insulted the sanctity of His Father's House. Yet, here we are two thousand years later and the issue of import in this country is the fear that somhow our Christian faith can be stamped out by respecting others. I can only believe that Jesus must be weeping, too. I'm certain that He is little concerned with whether a Wal-Mart greeter utters 'Happy Holidays' instead of 'Merry Christmas'. The world of sales is not of much import to our Lord.

Courtesy is a blessing, not an abomination. We are not asked to withhold our greeting of Merry Christmas from those we love for to share it especially with those whom we know to be of our own faith enhances not diminishes its meaning. Why do we wish to make others ashamed of their beliefs, their cultures? Jesus would not do so, He crossed those barriers as with the woman at the well. That is His example to us, how can we do less?

Yet we do less and we use his birth not to celebrate the coming of our Saviour but to politicize God and generate fear in our country of foreigners and their religions. Just as the Puerto Ricans and the Polish feared and hated each other in West Side Story.

A place for us. A place for everyone. Love conquers all these fears and doubts. Jesus conquers them and He does so with His defenselessness as a newborn babe that relies on OUR protection; how do we forget this, how can we?

It is personal, I know. A place for us.A place for Love. Somewhere, someday. Please God. A place for my fundamentalist brother and sister whetther, Christian or Muslim, Buddist or Jew.. A place for those of the same sex to love without fear, for my dear Mark and me. A place for Jews and Palestinians to extend a hand of friendship and not a bomb or gunshot. A place for and Iraqi and an American to live together in peace without Jhiad and premetive strikes. Does such a world have a possibility? I weep with hope that it is so.

And so in my home I will wish Merry Christmas to my family and to those whom share my belief and love of Jesus - and to those whom I do not know I shall proffer a non-demoninational greeting of the season so that I may respect that their love of God may be expressed in different words.

If I do so, will those of good heart of other beliefs not do the same for me - and you?

Tonight, tonight!