Each of us is a beautiful individual. We become who we are from our genetics, the ways that our neurological systems work, our experiences and the ways in which the people we have known have influenced us. No two people even from the same family and same backgrounds are totally identical. There are small differences here and there in how we look and think and feel. Becoming oneself is a lifetime journey that we don’t always understand even about ourselves. 

Because I know this to be true I often wonder why some among us try so hard to change the people around them into mirror images of themselves. Why would we think that one way of being is totally right and another is totally wrong? If we look around us even within the limits of our personal worlds surely we can see and understand the need for each person to define what and whom they want to be. 

There were people who came to the Americas from Europe because they had adopted certain religious beliefs that were literally illegal in their countries of origin. Sadly there is a long history of persecuting people for their religious thinking or lack of it, People have been burned at the stake, imprisoned, ostracized for their spiritual thoughts. So it was for many of the brave souls who landed in Massachusetts near what is now Plymouth in the long ago. They were literally religious refugees hoping to find a place where they would have the freedom to follow their God. We celebrate them each Thanksgiving and call them Pilgrims.

Others would come to the land for many different reasons but in every case they saw it as an opportunity to build the kind of lives that felt right for them. The freedom and sense of independence from authoritarians telling them what to do became the impetus for founding the United States. We all know this and yet of late we have a lot of finger and tongue wagging against individuals who do not fit the ideas of certain religious beliefs. What an irony that people in our nation would be using their religion to judge the behavior of others that they do not approve. 

The whole idea of baking religious freedom into the Bill of Rights was based on the fear of the people that the new government would begin deciding what is ethical and what is not based on a set of standards related to religion. A perfect example is targeting the LGBTQ community simply because some faiths find such relationships to be wrong. While persons who believe so have every right to that thinking, it is also true that those who are members of the LGBTQ lifestyle have every right to live as they decide. Neither group can kill or steal because those things are universally wrong, but telling someone who they can or cannot love or be is none of our business and should always be so. We should all be in favor of protecting personal rights, not harassing those that we find offensive. If we go down that road we are no better than the nations who ran the Pilgrims out of their homeland.

In all honesty it does not matter to me if someone wants to take the Bible literally and believe that Methuselah lived hundreds of years as long as they don’t make everyone think that. If someone is appalled by a homosexual or trans person I would suggest that they just stay away from them. I find racism of any kind to be appalling but I can’t make someone accept those of a race other than their own. What I can do is insist on enforcing laws that that protect each of us from discrimination. 

Nobody should have to change who they are or what they believe because of an authoritarian government. Leaders who turn us against each other might make political points with a certain group of people but surely they know that this is not in keeping with the foundational ideals that became our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. No one person should ever be able to do whatever he wants just because it pleases him or because he is angry that he was caught breaking laws and is now seeking retribution. 

I was only eight years old when my father died but I vividly remember how often he warned me not to be part of any organization in which people with wagging tongues were telling me how to be. He taught me that there were people like that who would even insist that they knew how my relationship with God must be. I remembered his warning because it seemed so out of the ordinary and I have always avoided any kind of self righteousness that attempts to police my beliefs and my very being or those of anyone else. 

We are at our best as a nation when we agree to just live and let live with each other. Nobody wants to be made to defy the beliefs of who they know they are. Let’s honor each other by agreeing that it is really none of our business to assume that we know what is best for someone else. Instead let’s celebrate the glorious human creations that bloom all around us. None of them are junk.