Catholic Church in Mexico

My mother left my father when I was only a few months old and brought my brother and I to Nome, Alaska to live with our recently divorced uncle and his two kids. A few years later she met an empathetic National Guardsman and married as a sacrifice for her children to have a stable household. Nine years later, my older brother went to prison for 8 years and she divorced and remarried a black man doing a life sentence. Her family disowned her and I felt only shame. I turned to drugs and alcohol at 12 and was kicked out by 15, living in a tent in the forest near the high school. Luckily it was not winter but early spring.

I never knew white privilege.

I joined the military at 17 and parachuted into war at 18. I did four and a half years of active duty infantry time, two years in Iraq, and was honorably discharged in November of 2006.

While sitting at Barnes and Noble today working on my novel, I overheard a woman that exemplified a white Christian savior. Not a common phenomenon in small town Alaska, where women wear Carhartts and hike mountains.

She wore a large white cross with jewels and a chain worth more than my entire wardrobe times ten. Dyed blonde hair and clothes that shined like her teeth. She sat across from a black woman and talked loud enough for everyone in the Starbuck’s to hear.

Another catholic church in Mexico

The only thing I heard the black woman say the entire hour, before I stood up to move away from her blasphemy, was how she loved rice and ate rice all the time. The blonde said: “I know! I love rice, too! I eat it about once every couple of months covered in butter.” I quickly learned the blonde woman knew everything because that was always her response.

Two other fake blondes anywhere from 30-60 years old showed up and the loud mouth woman spoke about her new Baptist church and how much she loves Jesus. She bragged about how much money she raised to adopt a Russian girl who decided not to come over, and how bad she felt for taking people’s money and not using it on what she mentioned. Anytime one of the other women said something, all she could say was: “I know!”

At least a dozen times she claimed how her and her Christian husband were going to give more than they already do to the church and to all of the poor kids who need adopting. Maybe one day they would adopt, too. I gave her the meanest look I could and still she kept talking.

Last year I decided to read the Bible for the first in my life. For the past ten years I’ve studied Buddhism and found the affects of meditation and compassion to lighten my guilty heart. I am an avid reader and writer and have read many of the classics, including the Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana and Upanishads. But because of my anger and judgment towards “good Christians” I never picked up the Bible but rolled joints with the pages.

And another Catholic church in Mexico

I started the Old Testament on November 1st and finished the New Testament on July 4th. I am now a Christian but have not been baptized in a church but baptized by my brother in a river. We baptized each other. When we heard that baptism today is “an outward expression of an inward grace” we rebelled.

The woman at the Barnes and Noble was probably what many people consider to be a “good Christian.” A term I despise. What she said made me think about what Jesus said in Matthew 6:5-6.

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

I look forward to returning to small town, Alaska to escape the slanderers who claim to be Christians.