Ok, listen up all you happy-clappy-Jesus people

You know, I really believe the woman whose death got so much media attention this week deserves to be left in peace, and thus I have held back from touching on that topic, despite the frustration and anger and sadness that has bubbled up in me so many times, begging for expression. I have watched the death of somebody that I loved very much, and so I have my opinions on the universal aspects of death and dying, as well as the ways that each situation is unique and private. But now, I just can't stand it any more. My patience snapped the moment I read that Tom DeLay is calling for the judges in this high-profile case to be impeached. Now, I am just pissed.

Are we like lobsters in a pot, slowly being boiled as our country slides into theocracy? What are we going to do about it?

For one thing, the subject of spirituality and religion cannot be taboo in progressive circles. Exploration of the greater meaning of things, the wonder of existence, is a natural human desire. It's not clever or smart to deny that this is so, to avoid mention of it as embarassing or quaint or backwards, let alone to respond with ridicule. Why have we allowed public discussion of these profound questions to be hijacked by those who believe in such a fearful, joyless, controlling, and unimaginative set of answers? It's no longer ok for progressive people of faith to say, "but those people just make no sense."

I know there are people pushing back, but why are these questions not shouted from the rooftops: You who call yourselves Christians, where is your faith? You who choose to believe in the transactional Jesus, who traded his life for the keys to a literal heaven, where you'll get to lounge in deck chairs on fluffy clouds and commune in bliss with a bearded God and white-robed Jesus - why would you want to keep somebody from that paradise in which you place such unquestioning confidence? Why would you pin down their souls in a trap of tubes and machines?

Read some of these books. I was trying to be all subtle and polite when I posted them - like, hey, here are some books that, you know, somebody might be interested in. But even then I was thinking - Expand your minds, people! These are serious questions, and failing to fully apply the divine spark that is your mind - this is the greatest abomination of all against whatever God you believe in, whatever force created you. Even the Jesuits, with their love of education and learning, know that.

The Buddhists - as I understand it, though I'm hardly an expert - have a lovely concept of heaven, though that's not what they call it. The ground of being, the pool of all life and energy that co-mingles everything in blissful togetherness. As they see it, when we die, we strive to fully realize our connection that sublime pool of being. But fear and distraction and pain may cause us to hang on to the lesser, familiar existence that we know, condemming ourselves to repeated lifetimes. A dying person must be freed of distraction - noise, physical interference, fear - in order to concentrate on releasing their being to that Great All. That is the first vision of heaven that has ever made sense to me. And once you hear it, the idea of tubes and machines becomes horrific and cruel.

So who says that your vision of heaven gets to be legislated into law and mine doesn't? Who says you get to conduct a witch hunt of politicians and physicians and judges who don't accept your religious dogma? If that's what you want for our country, how will it be any different from the rule of the clerics in Iran?

And oh, Jesse Jackson - I'm so disappointed in you.