Tag: Happy Birthday

Birthday Wish

April 16, 2022.Reading time 4 minutes.

This picture is my 6th birthday in 1971.  Monday April, 18, marks exactly 51 years later.  When I was six, my biggest wishes were for model cars and G.I. Joes.  The boy to my right was also named Adam the other boy was named Paul (?) and the girl Natalie or Natalia (?)…not sure why I remember these names.  They were my only friends at that time as I wasn’t in school.  I had started first grade early the previous fall while I was still five, but my parents pulled me out of public school shortly after I began, in part because of ongoing teachers struggles in the New York City school system.  Later that year, we tried me in school again.  I started at the Cathedral School of St. John the Divine where my brother was already a student, and where one of my classmates was Ben Stiller (albeit not famous yet.)  Funny how well I remember that ice-cream; I know I wished for that as well.  My wishes were much simpler then.

And yes, I am wearing a daishiki. #blackpowerchild

I think about heavier and more weighty things these days.  But considering the fact that the backstory to this picture includes teachers striking for equitable treatment, I guess it is no surprise that questions of justice are still part of my world.  Now however, I am part of helping justice emerge or stay present and not just the unwitting happy child benefiting from the hard work and advocacy of others.  Now, I hold my work to be just as important as education in that I am committed to ideas of equity in religious freedom in this country and the world.

In a democratic republic such as the United States, it is not enough to have “religious freedom” or “religious liberty” because the nature of democratic choice means that there also exists the freedom to use religion as a weapon or intentional tool of oppression.  In a truly pluralistic society, there must also be religious equity…that is, a commitment to balance, relationship, and accountability among religions.  This is how free entities of religion can remain in community with one another.  Without a tool of relationship, there is the potential for chaos, unchecked conflict, and total war.

Religious freedom alone as a definition was fine in the United States when “religion” was defined solely as coming from Abrahamic traditions as expressed and dominated by a homogenous population that maintained total power. In the 17 – 20th centuries, the primary tool of relationship maintaining religious freedom was hegemony.  The narrowness of an understanding of what religion was and how it functioned in a civil society and who had access to that understanding kept the definition of “religious freedom” contained.  In a globalized world, with the decentering of wealth based, white male hegemony and after the emergence of women’s rights to full humanity, the end of African enslavement and the recognition of Indigenous genocide, true diversity requires additional systems of accountability.

Yep, I think about heavier and more weighting things these days.

My birthday wish is that the principles of religious equity will become clearer and take hold in the United States.  And I pray that we will all benefit from an equal investment in protecting each other’s rights to living the faithful, ethical and or moral lives we choose.

-ALD

Happy Birthday

August 28, 2013.Reading time 6 minutes.

Today is the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  It was a pivotal day in the history of the Civil Rights movement in America.  Although it had been conceived before (reference is made in the film Brother Outsider to a plan in the 1940’s for a march of this nature) it was the first time any demonstration of this magnitude had ever come together in this country.  A mixing of races and religions and economic backgrounds came together and stood united in demonstration of the need for change for one specific demographic sector…black people.

These kinds of demonstrations aren’t so simple now.  As we progressed from the era of fighting for the rights of one marginalized population, other groups began to find their voices in the song of freedom.  Women, Gays and Lesbians, Latinos, Asian Americans, people with disabilities, Jews, Muslims, Atheists.  But eventually people started to realize as well that they weren’t just part of one group.  We used to joke (before political correctness) that if you were a black Jewish lesbian in a wheelchair, you had the ultimate minority status.  But we don’t make those jokes anymore; in fact, we are starting to see the value of recognizing what a black, Jewish, disabled lesbian would represent in the mix.  She would represent the degree to which we all sit at intersections of cultures, demographics and social standings.  Each of us has privilege; each of us has disadvantage.  The Civil Rights Movement ushered in an age of self identity that has now culminated in all of us finding multiple self identities.

As we look back on the March on Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech, the brilliance of Bayard Rustin’s organizing and the willingness of the people to buy into the effort and gather en-masse during a weekday, it does seem clear that somethings have definitely changed.  But it is also clear that some things have not really changed at all.  People have died for a cause who’s banners would be just as relevant today.  A white man can kill a black man and walk free.  We talk about how demographics are shifting to make people of color the majority in this country by 2050; but that kind of binary based demographic still leaves white people as the “norm” or the barometer against which everyone else is measured.   Change…but the same.

Progress…real progress, will mean a time when we are able to look at the world through something other than the binary lens: black/white; gay/straight; male/female; rich/poor; able/disabled.  We will look at each other as hearts and minds and we will look at life and maybe even God as a continuum…a spectrum of experience.  We will have no need for demographics because we will no longer be judging each other.  We will fully embrace our selves as black lesbian disabled Jews and our society will actually not raise an eyebrow when it is asked to embrace us back.

But over all, my point is, this day, in 1963 is when it began.  Certainly others fought hard before and after this date, but it is the one date we can point to when we know that at least 250,000 other people were thinking pretty much the same thing: “we need to do something about this mess.”

Today is also my friend Stacey’s birthday…in fact at the exact moment when those 250,000 people were gathered on the National Mall, when Martin Luther King, Jr. declared “I Have a Dream”, while Mahaila Jackson sang “How I Got Over,” Stacey sent her first cry to the heavens.  And although both Mahalia and Dr. King are gone, Stacey is still here and still crying to the heavens, singing jazz.  In 50 years, she has changed of course…as we all have, yet she is the same; just like this country, just like our dreams for justice and equality for all.

So, today, rather than lamenting how much things are the same after 50 years, let’s celebrate what is good about those things that haven’t changed…our basic desire for honesty, humanity and humility; our basic desire for good.  Our need to see the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice.  Our God given talents and gifts that lift one another up and unite us as one people to declare that we ALL have a dream; and of course the fact that we are still singing jazz.  For without dreams, whether they be great or small, what else do we have to live for?

Happy Birthday Stacey!