Hobby Lobby Day 3: A Bit of Poetry & A Whole Lot of Rage

Why does it matter?

A reasonable question:

Why does it matter that

HL is a corporation?  Are 

not corporations simply

organizations or structures

made up of people?  And if

so, why does it matter to say

that a corporation has religion?

This a friend did ask

and this I did truly and seriously

ponder and this is what I walked

away with . . . 

Quite simply, it matters . . . 

Because it is not true

[and Truth does indeed matter]

Because it is not true 

A corporation is not a person

We call it a legal fiction

Fiction is another word for ‘not true’

Made up

Pretend

A lie

in this case

a legal lie – 

meaning a lie

we agreed would be okay

because we all know it’s

a lie in advance – 

like Santa Claus

or the Easter Bunny

or Tooth Fairy

or “Yes, you look great in that dress”

yeah, like that

as a Christian

I do have to ask

exactly how it is

that a lie –

a self-professed lie

not just a liar –

as in someone who

sometimes lies – 

but a lie –

a thing which by

its very identity is

a sham, a pretense,

a farce, a false

yes, how that ‘thing’

that is Lie, albeit legal,

can be Truth?

I’m as fond of paradox as

the next person, but I tell

you, that dog won’t hunt

even if the cows and the chickens

do finally, at the last, come

home and come home to roost

***

Hobby Lobby had a prize

it’s truth – a pack of lies

that a SCOTUS – whatever that is – 

did say was true – ah, now we’re in biz!

Turns out you can be a bad Christian

so long as you’re not no Christian at all

and you get favors – the specialness

of your own peculiar brand of spe-ci-al-ity-ness

a prize – a ring – or perhaps a calf?

Oh now, let the cheating begin – at least by half

Your idolatry of your Christianity

would rouse hilarity if you had 

even a smidgeon of charity

but you are no-thing

so how can it even be?

It cannot

The Liars Club has met

and well met and it is 

so and we are done 

and undone and there

is no more laughter

not because it is a big

thing – no – truly you

are right – in and of –

itself – not so much –

but aye, here’s the rub –

finally we are unmasked

come out of our closet

and stood in the light

to be proudly revealed

and here we are –

a Christian nation

it would make a grown woman 

weep were it not so damned

funny – Christian, you see –

the follower of the Christ he

– that Way – would seem to 

say I am to take the irony

and give it another cheek –

and yes I do and yes I will –

but every now and then I do

wonder where’s Hobby’s

cheek, for I would surely

like to smite it and be forgiven

I would surely like to witness

that act of Christian fidelity

from a piece of paper filed 

away in a court house somewhere

and yes, my blood does boil

for I have not forgotten history

and the reasons that corporations

have existence in any form, 

fictitious or otherwise –

and let me assure you, 

it is not for the worship of God

never has been

never will be

and no, God does not need my defending

but thanks to SCOTUS, now I think I have

found it and it doth make me tremble –

for here stands the place where I make

the fool’s declaration

if there be corporations in heaven

then count me out . . . 

And surely this will make you laugh

and laugh some more – when it comes

to the ‘faith’ + corporations new math

[I do so love irony]

in its origins, 

‘corporation’

could 

and 

did

refer 

to

the 

S-T-A-T-E

[now wasn’t that worth the wait?]

Yes – to the government

to that very entity 

whose requirements 

the secret

hiding

masked

owners

seek

to avoid

it too is one of them

it too, apparently may have a god

[as opposed, of course, to being one, 

as the ancients – and apparently a few

moderns – you know who you are – did

and do insist]

isn’t the irony fabulously rich?

And of course it does make sense

for a corporation to claim a religious

identity when one of the main historic

purposes of corporations was the survival

of the entity beyond the death of its members

the idea of perpetuity

isn’t that a grand word?

The other word, of course, is

eternity

You see – of course the corporation has a god

[you were merely surprised because you thought

it thought itself to be a god – we always love that one]

anything that’s going to claim infinity as its shelf life

darned well better have a god, after all

ah, but you thought our god was money

close – but not quite –

it’s not money we worship, you see –

rather, it’s money that is the expression of our faith

you sing

you praise

you thank

we make money

it’s all the same

isn’t it?

***

I think 

if I am

honest

it is a 

matter 

of jealousy

I cannot be it

but alas

it can be me

and the sweeping

grandiosity

the canard of it all

does truly take my breath

my breathing me breath

away

and since presumably

it must choose

I wonder that a corporation

would ever choose to be

a woman

I would not were I it

for if I did

on my own petard

would I not be hoist?

***

Why I Don't Pledge Allegiance to a Flag

1. It feels like a loyalty oath, which means to me that even though I am a citizen of this particular country, others have deemed that I am obligated to continually establish something that is self-evident: that I am a citizen, or perhaps better, that I am a good citizen. I take good citizenship as a given, even though you and I might define good citizenship very differently. But I would understand the concept of good citizenship as the presumptive norm, which means it does not have to be proven or reproven.

2. I’m an only child.  It’s the only explanation I’ve got for my own instinctive rejection of group think, and collective pledges always put me in mind of group think, especially when the lack of participation becomes a matter of negative judgment or perception.  It may seem incredibly ironic that I would be a pastor and actively participate in the life of a church, given this worldview.  But Presbyterians affirm freedom of the conscience, which is about the only way someone like me could play in their sandbox.

Called a 'patriotic product'

3. Symbols matter hugely.  And I do not like what this particular symbol has become – a sort of litmus test  of acceptability.  Thus virtually every national politician wears a culturally-obligated flag lapel pin and the failure to wear one translates as ‘unAmerican’.  Who decided that?  I must have missed the meeting.

4. It feels like idolatry to me.  I’m not saying it’s idolatrous for others.  I am saying it’s idolatrous for me.  Investing pieces of cloth with the sacred, prescribing how flags are to be venerated, treated while ‘alive’, disposed of when ‘dead’, invests the symbol with a meaning that pushes me away rather than draws me near.  There aren’t that many rules (really, there aren’t any) for the disposition of the sacred texts of my faith.  When a Bible gets worn out, you just throw it away.  I may love where I live.  I may even respond to the many symbols of where I live.  But I do not worship them.

5. Flag-draped coffins.

6. The Pledge of Allegiance is too closely linked in my mind with triumphalism – the implied declaration that we are better than everyone else.  We are not.  Nor, in my view, should we wish to be.  Life is not a contest.

I really can’t recall a specific occasion when I decided to stop pledging allegiance to the flag.  As an adult who rarely attends sporting events (the only professional sporting event I have ever attended was a pro-wrestling event in our town my Dad took me to when I was a kid), does not work in a public school system, and is rarely at public political events, I am not often called upon to choose whether to stand with others and recite the pledge or not.

Thus you could know me for a lifetime and never know this about me.  Whenever the pledge is recited, I stand – as a sign of respect to you, not the flag, so my non-pledging probably goes unnoticed.

And I’ve had to reflect quite a bit to understand my own motivations.  The biggest reason I eschew flag-waving, -wearing, -pledging exercises, I think, is the linkage I observe between the flag and our militarism.  The language in the pledge of ‘indivisibility’ is a direct reference to our own civil war.  Flags cropped up all over the place in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, usually coupled with the language of violent revenge.  A friend who refused to hang a flag from her dorm room window was ostracized.  That she had family in the Pentagon on the day was of no interest to those who would judge her as lacking in some fundamental way.  So perhaps for me it’s a bit of a protest against our tendency to violence as a problem-solving technique in these United States.  If so, until now, it’s never been something I felt the need to announce.  Why now?  I’m truthfully not sure.  Maybe it has to do with spending more time than I care to recently listening to folks tell me how much they disagree with me or find me wanting when they really don’t know that much about me.  Maybe in effect, I’m saying, you want to really disagree with me?  But I don’t think so.  I really think that June and July, the months of celebration for statehood for my home state of West Virginia, and nationhood for the United States, wear me down, especially in election years.  I love being from West Virginia.  But I am ashamed of my native state, and especially the Democrats of that state, for voting in the presidential primary for a man currently incarcerated in the state of Texas over President Obama.  West Virginians declared by their majority vote that they would rather have a man they know nothing about save that he is a felon doing time as their presidential candidate than Mr. Obama.  It’s hard, if not downright impossible, to believe that is anything but overt racism.  And I am ashamed of us as a nation for our use of force as our first instinct around the world whenever problems arise.  I am ashamed that there are never enough guns to satiate our felt need for safety and power.  And I am appalled that we drape all of it in a flag and call it holy.  That’s my inner protestor speaking.  But maybe that’s a little high-minded for the truth when it comes to me and pledges.

Because maybe, just maybe, deep down, I’m more a libertarian than I’d like to admit.  Maybe it’s just that I’m unwilling or unable to do something, anything, simply because someone else expects or demands that I should.