All those who have died this year
Are stones in the river
Creating a bridge
For us to cross
These troubled times.
They were sacrificed
Or sacrificed themselves
So that we may get safely
To the other side.
Give thanks for their lives
Because they make it possible
For us to have one.
To vote for someone because of their gender is just as sexist as voting against someone because of their gender.
Women may think that they are being feminist by voting for Hillary Clinton because she is female, but by default they are choosing to vote against Donald Trump because he is male. To make a decision based on gender is sexist even if you think that your decision is positive. People who voted for men in the past didn’t think that they were voting against women, but by default they were. You have to choose one or another. But if your main criteria for selection is gender, then that is sexist.
The same thing happens when women decide to make their God female. When they worship the Goddess they are making God in their own image. They are making God into something that looks like them.
When we have hiring policies that force employers to hire people based on their gender or their race in order to make up a difference from the past we are again being sexist or racist. They don’t appear so because we are making up for a previous deficiency. We are righting a wrong.
But when you select someone in the positive you by default are leaving out someone in the negative. In choosing a black woman over a white man for a job purely because of gender or race rather than ability you are by default not choosing the other as an employee because of his gender and race. You may think that you are making a positive choice but by your seemingly positive choice you are by default leaving out someone else.
We need to vote for and hire people, not packages. We need to vote for and hire what is inside rather than what is outside.
Psalm 130
Wisdom 1:12-15
Wisdom 3:1-9
Psalm 23
Romans 5:5-11 (or Romans 6:3-9)
Psalm 121
John 6:37-40
1 Corinthians 15:5-55
Notes – BibleGateway is an excellent website for copying Bible verses. They have many translations, including the “New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition” which will have the readings from Wisdom, a book from the Apocrypha and thus not in a Protestant Bible. All of these readings (except for Psalm 121) come from the Catholic daily readings appointed for All Soul’s Day.
Note that I don’t say “Celebration of Life” as some people will. While it is important to be positive and celebrate the person who we were fortunate enough to know, it is also important to acknowledge that they have died. There is too much white-washing of death going on these days. “Cemeteries” are now called “memorial parks”. Prominent and visible headstones are now out of favor for discrete in-set bronze plaques. Even coffins which have the shape of a person have now been transformed into caskets, which are simple rectangular boxes to intentionally obscure the fact of the contents. Funeral directors are no longer called morticians or undertakers. Embalmers are “derma surgeons”. The more we cover over the reality of death, the harder it will be for us to accept its inevitability. Death comes to us all. The sooner we accept that, the sooner we can go on with living our lives mindfully, knowing that they are finite.
betsybeadhead 