You took my joy, i want it back!

Apparently for people like me, yesterday was a bad news day. I don’t read the newspaper. I do listen to NPR if that tells you anything about me, but yesterday I was working all day, and on the way home from my hour drive from Stillwater I was jamming to Ryan Adams’ Cold Roses CD, if that tells you anything about me. I heard about all this bad in the news last night as Linda ticked off each item until I said “STOP”. “That’s enough I don’t want to know”.

But I heard about the hate and intolerance and this never ending squabble about “Christmas” VS “Holiday” and each year this happens I move farther from Christmas because more and more it seems a holiday for complete whack jobs starting at black Friday. I try not to stereo type Christians as social terrorists like most try not to stereo type Muslims, but I tell you there are some bad apples out their taking the joy out of our primal need to feel the spirit of God. To me people like Fred Phelps make God a dirty thing, an unholy thing. Something to stay as far away from as I can.

I wish I didn’t know about all the bad out there. I wish I could stay in my farmy utopia and be untouched by it all. But I have to maintain a certain sense of belonging to a greater community with The United States of America even though by default I was born one of the last groups of people openly denied basic civil rights. As I watch my friends and family live in complete freedom I’m faced daily with the knowledge that if I want that freedom offered to United States citizens I must conform and deny my own truth. And believe me I tried for years to do this. I was miserable and desperate to escape my prison of lies. So now I live as authentically as I can. I try not to talk about politics and I try not to remind most of my friends that they have a privilege I, probably in my life time won’t have. I can play it off like it doesn’t matter but it does. It hurts. I feel bad about it. Quietly.

Today and tomorrow and for as long as I can stand it, will be no news days, no NPR no Tulsa World no nothing. The news I hear will be from the goats, the wind through the last remaining leaves on the big oaks and the soft patter of chicken feet following me to the feed. This is joy, this is spirituality and right now as far as I know, no one can take that away from me. I’m not an activist. I am a farmer and I have one desire bigger than the news and that is to feed people, love completely and be loved. Live a life that is good. That’s my Joy.