The Down-Slope

Trying Times

Posted by Jess is Jess , Friday, February 19, 2010 Friday, February 19, 2010

Today has been the most challenging day I’ve faced in a while. And it is on a day like today that I have no other recourse that to turn once again to my guy, Bobby, for comfort and guidance.

(Also I can't find my Ativan so Bobby is the best thing I've got going for me tonight)

And so I will now work out my feelings through a scene. The following quotes from Bobby are all real though taken out of context (obviously).




Scene: The Starbucks on Kingston Pike. I am sipping an earl grey tea and Bobby is drinking coffee – black, no cream or sugar.

Me: It’s been a really rough day, Bobby. Very challenging. I am a supremely proud member of Amnesty International and we are working hard to promote human rights and civil liberties not just internationally but in our own communities. Yet the good name of our organization and our chapter was dragged through the mud today in the campus newspaper by an opinion ed piece about how Amensty International is basically the devil and that our chapter here on campus (of which I am VP) is pro-terrorist, pro-criminal, anti-children and here's the best one . . . are you ready???

ANTI-AMERICAN

This is in response to an event we are planning for this semester that the Issues Committee (of which the testicle who wrote the article is a member of) agreed to co-host and fully fund on Monday. My friend Mary (who is our chapter's Prez) and I went and spoke to the committee on Monday afternoon basically to sell our event and answering any questions that they had in order to gain their support.

Here is our blurb about the event: "Our goal is to draw on the knowledge of these esteemed experts to fully understand the various ethical dilemmas our country’s legal system now faces, and to create a forum of open discourse where we can discuss constructive solutions together."

Our panelists are a Public Defender, and Knox County Criminal Court Judge, a professor at the UT Law School who is a former TN State Supreme Court Justice, and a rep from Amnesty International who is an expert on the death penalty.

So the testicle (as he shall be called from henceforth) basically said that our event is a plot to lure in unsuspecting students in order to drown them in a biased political rant.

So I said, "Well, I disagree with you completely, obviously." (at which point everyone on the committee laughed goodnaturedly) and went on to restate everything we had just stated for them. But really, they gave us the funding and support so we thought it didn't matter . . . until today.

(I refuse to quote his remarks but here is the link if you care to read them http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/showarticle.php?articleid=56348)

I do not doubt for a single instant that his response and attack was directed not just at our chapter but at Mary and myself specifically.

I cannot begin to express how hard this day has been dealing with this.

Bobby: All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don't. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity.

Me: I know. I know that you are right and we are going to make the best damn lemonade anyone has ever tasted out of this guy’s attack. We are now in the midst of an intense campaign against the testicle and the newspaper that allowed his filth to be printed. I’m talking serious action. We've been in close contact with the director of Amnesty's Southern Regional Office and he is working with their media department to make an official statement, etc. The good thing from all of this is that we are going to be able to spin it in our favor in a major way and get tons of notice on campus and in the Knoxville area in general for our causes and for this event especially.

Bobby: (nodding) It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task.

Me: So true, and that is what we are trying to do. We all genuinely want to make the world a better place. We care about improving lives and protecting the rights of all people. It’s just so hard to keep your convictions when faced with such filth. And its especially hard for me when someone like the testicle is standing there waving a giant sign claiming “I represent true Catholics. I represent true Americans.”

I am fiercely patriotic – I deeply value the principles set down by the Founding Fathers and feel that it is my duty as an American citizen to uphold and protect these values in my own country and to help protect them for all of mankind. In addition to this, it is my faith in God and the example set for me by the Catholic Church that compels me to be an activist, it’s these tenents of social justice (if you are interested in the specifics - http://www.osjspm.org/major_themes.aspx) that have guided me.

Bobby: What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists, is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.

Me: Yes, this man is an extremist and unfortunately, there are many more like him in this world. He uses the American flag and the cross as façades for his hate and does so while pointing fingers and calling names. I cannot imagine what my bff Obama feels when people call him the kinds of names we've seen in the media.

I’ve been kind of surprised by myself today – by how much my feelings are hurt by this guy. I keep trying to remind myself that not only are his opinions unfounded but that they are a good test of the resilience and strength of my own character and resolve. This will not be the last time I will be faced with this type of behavior because I will not stop speaking my mind and fighting for equality and freedom. And I find comfort in the words of St. Joan of Arc who faced unthinkable horrors and still said, “I am not afraid. I was born to do this.”

I hope and pray that I will never face the horrors that St. Joan faced but I am not naïve enough to believe that this will be an easy fight or some sort of part-time philanthropy. I intend to spend my life doing what I can to protect the world.

________________________________________________________________________

My Bobby and Dr. King and so many others died because they fought for equality and justice and it is because of the stones they paved that I can continue to press onward on our journey. I will continue to fight the good fight and do my part.

No matter what people might say I know in my heart that being a liberal activist, a patriotic American, and faith-filled Catholic are not ideas that are mutually exclusive.

They can’t be.

They are me.

I’ve shared the a poem by E.E. Cummings with you before and it is absolutely the way that I try to live my life –

“i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)”

I mean that, with every fiber of my being.

I’m not always successful.

I’m not often successful - but I am trying.

Here are a couple more quotes from Bobby that I couldn’t really fit into my little play that I find particularly inspiring.

"Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired."

"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"

"Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies."

"Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."




Thanks for listening.