A Call to Arms for America

I. Am. OUTRAGED.

I just found out (thanks to Google maps) that there is not one, but TWO Catholic cathedrals within a two-and-a-half block radius of the former site of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City!  One of them is directly across the street - you can see it from almost anywhere within the memorial park!  Turn around, look down the block and past some trees, and there's the other one!  TWO Catholic cathedrals casting shadows on the memories of the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.

How can we, as Americans, stand for this?

Weren't our hearts stabbed clear through on April 19, 1995, when we turned on our televisions and saw horrifying images of twisted steel and shattered concrete?  Didn't we cry and mourn for the 168 victims and their families?  Didn't we shudder in horror at the sight of the burnt and mangled toys from the daycare center where 19 innocent children were killed?

And yet somehow we must have forgotten our duty to honor and respect those that died that day, our brothers and sisters and fellow Americans.  Maybe it just didn't feel real enough.  Something failed to ignite our righteous anger.  Otherwise we would never have allowed two cathedrals to stand so near to an open wound.

After all, Timothy McVeigh was Catholic.

True, he wasn't a practicing Catholic at the time of the bombing.  But he was raised Catholic, and the things he learned in childhood were still a part of his belief structure and questionable moral fiber for the rest of his life, as he explained in an interview to Time Magazine in 2001:

I was raised Catholic. I was confirmed Catholic. Through my military years, I sort of lost touch with the religion. I never really picked it up, however I do maintain core beliefs. I do believe in a God.

If only we had stood up then!  If only we had demanded that the cathedrals be torn to the ground, so as to not taint the memory of the bombing victims!  How much pain could we have saved the loved ones of those victims?  How much pain could we have saved America?

The Catholic church has had its share of bad press in the last few years, what with all the child molesting and everything (Fun fact! John Wayne Gacy was Catholic).  Clearly, the Catholic church is a breeding ground for terrorism and must be sent a clear and direct message.  I call for my fellow Americans to join me in protesting the continued existence of these Cathedrals of Terror!

Wait, that doesn't seem grave enough.  Hmmm.... how about the Monstrous Cathedrals of Evil Terror and Also Molesting Children and Kicking Puppies?

Ooh, that's good.

As I don't live anywhere near Oklahoma City, I'm going to have to rely on support from all 11 readers of this blog to do the actual protesting for me.  But I'd be happy to help you come up with some kickass picket slogans.  I'm really good at that.  "MCoETaAMCaKP Are Monuments to Terrorism!" "This is America! Go Back to the Vatican!" "Obama = Kenyan Puppy Kicker!" "Terrorists Don't Deserve Churches!" "God Hates Fags!"

We simply cannot allow this to continue!  Have we no pride, no patriotism?

And it can't stop in Oklahoma City, fellow Americans.  We also have a civic duty to protest the Lutheran church around the corner from Columbine High School, to show that we condemn the actions of Dylan Klebold and other potential Lutheran terrorists like him!

But wait.  Let's be clear here.  I am not targeting religion.  After all, America was founded on the belief that we should be free to practice whatever religion we choose.  I don't have a problem with the Catholic religion, or the Lutheran religion.  I have a problem with their obvious ties to terrorist splinter groups which are completely indiscernable from the religions themselves.

There's a huge difference.

But lest there are still a few anti-American left-wing tree-hugging communists out there who believe that this is nothing more than a vicious attack on any specific religions or practitioners thereof, allow me to continue.  The next step in preserving the fragile heart and tender feelings of America is to get rid of all the sushi restaurants around Pearl Harbor.

Do you have any idea how many there are?  It's like, you're there, looking through the hauntingly blue water at the USS Arizona, choking up a bit as you think of all the thousands of soldiers and citizens that were viciously and brutally attacked that morning, and the whole time there are a half a dozen sushi joints right across the bay watching you mourn and rubbing your face in it!  "Ha ha ha!" they say.

Or rather, "は は は!"

"We totally attacked you without warning on that infamous day!  Now come inside and enjoy some delicious sashimi OR WE WILL DO IT AGAIN!"

Do we really want to wait for that to happen, America?  Do we really want another Catholic to bomb downtown Oklahoma City?  Do we want another Lutheran high schooler to turn a gun on his classmates in Littleton?  Do we want the Japanese to attack our warships stationed at Pearl Harbor?  After all, history repeats itself.  And by allowing these monuments to terrorist organizations to stand so close to places so deeply effected by their terrorist actions, we are simply inviting them to attack again.  We are saying we didn't think it was that big of a deal, and that all of those lives lost really don't mean anything to us.

We need to send a clear message to these terrorists: You Don't Mess with America, Texas or Otherwise.  Tear down the cathedrals!  Tear down the churches!  Tear down the sushi restaurants!

Otherwise, how far will it go?  What's next, America?  An Islamic cultural center two blocks away from where the World Trade Center used to stand?

That'd be just plain un-American.

Dear Friend,

We both know that there was a time, early on, when we didn't exactly get along.  I resented you for disrupting my easy life with your myriad of personal problems, and you resented me for not showing you more patience and understanding.  Slowly, over time and distance, we began to build a mutual understanding of each other.  We were able to look beyond our differences.  We found more and more reasons to tolerate each other, then respect each other, and eventually like each other.

Eventually you became a fixture in my life - albeit something of a background fixture.  Metaphorically, you were like a painting hanging on my wall.  I'm always vaguely aware of you, and often think of you, but rarely take the time to stop and really look closely.

Although we travel in different social circles, live miles apart, and rarely see each other anymore, I still consider you an important person in my life, and a great friend.

Which is why I have to tell you this:

Please stop with this nonsense.  It's killing you.

You have been through more in the past few years than anyone should have to.  I cannot imagine being in your place - I doubt I would have handled it with the grace that you did.  You have proven yourself to be a strong, brave, intelligent, loving woman.  You have taken a hell of a beating from life, only to stand up and wait for more.  Life didn't keep you waiting long.

You have asked aloud many times, "Why me?  Why is all this happening to me?"  You always come around to the same answer.  You say that your struggles are from God.  You say God is testing you.  You say God is putting you through this for reasons you don't understand now, but that will be made clear to you in the eternities.

You say that it brings you comfort, knowing that God has a hand in all this shit you've gone through.  But it doesn't.  Every time you claim that you're finding peace through relying on God, you are lying.  After seven years of knowing you, of reading your creative stories and your poems and your blog, I've learned how to read between the lines.  I can interpret your tone.

Your God is a fucking asshole.  And you know it.

You don't find any peace in God.  You only find familiarity.  You don't know what else to think.  You insist on serving a God you resent because you think that eventually, if you're patient and long-suffering, that God will relieve of you of your pain.  You will spend your whole goddamn life waiting.

God did not make you sick.  God did not take your children.  Thinking he did, thinking there is someone up in the sky who has made things wrong and is just taking his sweet time before making things right is completely destroying your sense of self-worth.

You are worth so much more than the God you believe in will ever let you be.

You say that you need to rely on God until you can believe in yourself again.  That makes absolutely no sense.  YOU are here.  YOU have proven yourself to be an incredible woman, with incredible attributes.  You have so many friends and loved ones who admire and look up to you.  YOU.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with God.

Please, PLEASE, believe in yourself!  Believe that you have what it takes to power through everything life throws at you!  You absolutely can.  You have before.  You will again.  Every time you rely on God to make you stronger, you are actually weakening yourself.  You cannot curl up in a ball and ride out the storm because you want to believe that at the end of it all God will make it up to you.

This is it.  This is the only life you get. Don't waste it.  Don't waste away.

I hate that you have had to go through these things.  But it hurts more to see you falling apart and just waiting for some mystical God to put you back together.  It's not going to happen.  Eventually you will put yourself together again, because that great source of strength and power that you so desperately seek is within you.

It's hard for me to understand how you could possibly believe in God.  It was difficult enough for me, who has never been through anything remotely comparable to you, to tell myself I believed in God.  How can you claim to believe that someone who would torture you for years without relief or explanation is any kind of perfect being?

Your God is a complete hypocrite who dishes out punishments and rewards on a whim.  The idea that there is some afterlife where everything will sort itself out is absurd, particularly in Mormonism.  You believe that if you handle this shitstorm of life to God's liking, he will give you the EXACT SAME REWARD as people who simply coasted through life with very few struggles and trials.  Your God is unfair and highly immoral.  And yet you allow yourself to wallow in self-doubt.  Deep down, even though you say you know God is just giving you trials because he knows you're strong enough to handle it, part of you wonders if it's some sort of punishment for sins you didn't know you committed.

I generally don't have a problem with the fact that many of my loved ones believe in God.  That's their prerogative, just as it is mine to be an atheist.  I truly believe that if having faith in something helps you to become the best version of yourself, then it's good for you.  I don't think that a belief in God is always a crutch - sometimes that's just the best way people can find to explain all the wonderful and terrible unknowables of life.  But in your case, I honestly wish you would let go of that belief.  I fear that you will focus so much on the unknown reward you believe God has in store for you that you will neglect to seek out happiness and beauty in this life.  You are going to miss out on so much because you have decided to wait for God to make everything right rather than focus on the things that are already right.

I firmly believe that you will find great joy in your life.  Unfortunately, when you do, you will tell yourself that the God who has for so long been so cruel to you has suddenly decided that you deserve a break.  You won't credit yourself with becoming stronger, you will credit God.  You won't credit yourself with finding ways to be happier, you will credit God.  You are denying yourself the opportunity to know how amazing you truly are.

I would never wish the things you have been through upon my worst enemy.  There are not enough words to tell you how impressed I am with the way you have conquered your life.  It breaks my heart to watch you deny your own accomplishments, your own strengths, and instead give the credit to a supposed God who you believe is the reason you've suffered in the first place.

Please, friend.  Please know that you are so much better than your God makes you feel.  Please know that you are a truly beautiful person.  Please know that there is so much to this short life that you should embrace and enjoy.

You can't wait forever for a God who doesn't exist to make you happy.  You are more than capable of doing that yourself.

All my love,

Kristen

To Those Who Left Comments on My Exit Letter

Dear Friends,

When I first started writing this blog, I felt the need to refrain from posting too often about my experience leaving the church.  When I finally realized how cathartic (and healthy) it could be to write my feelings down, I was so emotionally weighed down by the realization of the lies I was discovering that I doubted I would ever be able to say enough.

My exit letter changed that.

As I mentioned in the post containing my letter, I first went through several boring drafts.  I was less than satisfied with them.  I literally spent hours writing and re-writing a single sentence, trying to make it as powerful and succinct as I could possibly make it while maintaining a kind of cold distance that I thought was necessary for this type of letter.

When I finally wrote the version that I mailed to church headquarters last March, I did it in a single pass. I gave it little more than a brief proofreading (which you can tell if you read it closely enough) before printing out two copies.  I spent so little time on it, in fact, that I mixed up parts of my old and new address on the return and didn't notice until I was at the post office.  I scratched it out and hand-wrote the correct numbers.  It was the easiest letter I have ever written, because I had reached a point where I stopped caring completely about how it would be received.  I said exactly what I wanted to say, how I wanted to say it, and I refused to be apologetic about it.

Writing that letter did more than just close the book on my membership with the LDS church.  It closed the book on my relationship with the church.  Although it didn't mention many of the facts I had discovered or explain the emotions I had felt, it somehow felt complete.  Since writing that letter, I've struggled to think of things to say about mormonism that could be turned into posts on this blog.  But the fact of the matter is, once I wrote that letter I simply stopped caring.  I stopped letting it bother me.  I stopped letting it effect me.  I stopped letting the struggles of my past dictate my attitude in the present and the future.

Earlier tonight, a friend mentioned to me that he still receives emails informing him that there have been follow-up comments on that post (something I had never set up to receive myself).  I hadn't visited this blog in a while and decided to take a look for myself.  I expected two or three comments.  I found over forty.

Dear readers, I am overwhelmed.  I have such deep gratitude and appreciation for all of you who have taken the time to share with me your support, your congratulations, and your proposals of marriage.

I'm particularly thankful for those.

It is such a humbling thing, to discover that a deeply personal manifesto of sorts would ring true with so many people, most of them strangers.  I realize that to many of you, forty comments means very little.  Some of you probably receive that many and more on a weekly or even daily basis.  But I have authored several blogs over the years, and have never had that kind of response.

I was so touched, in fact, that although it's just after 1:00 a.m., and I'm finding it difficult to remember how many beers I had tonight, I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep until I had drafted a thank-you to all those who have read my exit letter, whether they left a comment or not.

To those who said it inspired them to write (or re-write) their own letter of resignation, thank you and best of luck!  To those who said it made them laugh, thank you and you brought a huge smile to my face!  To those who asked me to marry them, thank you and I can easily be wooed with red velvet cupcakes.

Love,

Kristen