All’s Fair
Here in Minnesota, where I live, the State Fair is the main thing going on. It upstages even the dreaded back-to-school days which are also dominant in hearts and minds.
In other places where I have lived, State Fairs are about as central to life as, say, roller coasters, or ferret ownership, or balloon rides. That is to say, some people like it enough to spend time seeking it out, most people don’t, and life goes on swimmingly. That’s not the way it is in Minnesota.
I don’t know why it is, but it would never occur to me, or anyone I know, to miss our state fair in Minnesota. Why? We spend too much money, eat too many calories, stand in too many lines. For those of us who are urban, we see animals that we have no interest in seeing the rest of the year, ogle farm machinery we will never in our lifetimes use, and stare at strange things ranging from seed art to butterheads—Princess Kay of the Milky Way, carved live out of butter as she shivers in a refrigerator in her dress and tiara.
And we get so excited about it! I’ve already been twice, and plan to go back at least once more, with friends who like to see and do different parts of the fair. I begin looking forward to it in early August, and begin to plot out trips, buying early tickets to save a few bucks. I like to go once when the fair is just opening in the morning, primarily to see the barns and animals. I go once during the afternoon, to go to the Midway and ride some rides, play a little whack-a-mole, try to win a useless prize with skeeball tickets. And then I like to go once at night to enjoy some kind of concert. This year it was Bonnie Raitt and Mavis Staples—pure heaven!
Truthfully, I think that looking forward to the fair is about as much fun as going. As the nights get colder and the sky is dark later in the morning, as the back to school sales crank up into full swing, the fair gives us something to think about besides the end of summer. How can you dread the end of August when you get to eat a pickle on a stick? How can September be a bad thing when it comes in with seed art?
This year, when I went with a friend on opening day, the two of us were so excited we could hardly concentrate enough to pick a starting place. Eventually we strode over to the horticulture building. The vegetables on display were no better looking than the ones I see every week at the farmers’ market, but seeing them with judges’ ribbons next to them enhanced their importance.
This year, ‘the great get together’ has a sad shadow side. Elections loom. We have, in addition to the bitterly divisive Presidential election, two ballot initiatives introduced by the Republicans to crank up voter turnout in Minnesota: A constitutional amendment that limits marriage to opposite sex couples, and a voter suppression bill which disallows same day registration and demands government issued IDs—disproportionally disenfranchising the poor, people of color, transgender people, and other marginalized folks.
So at the fair, in addition to the universal experiences of food on a stick and gaping at farm animals, there was also an undercurrent of divisiveness. Plenty of people, like me, picked up bright orange fans that screamed “VOTE NO: Don’t Limit the Freedom to Marry” at the Minnesotans United for All Families booth. Meanwhile, I saw many people sporting “Protect My Vote” backpacks. I’m sure they felt as sad and helpless seeing my fan as I felt seeing their backpacks. Trying to figure out how to have a real conversation about it was an insurmountable challenge as we jostled one another in the crowded streets and competed against each other in Midway games.
Despite those differences, the fair was a good place to remember that we have more in common than what separates us. I pray that I will still feel like that the second week of November, when my stuffed animal prizes will have long since been turned into dog toys and cheese curds are but a distant memory.
The Mean Season
Like many of you, I am already bemoaning the tone and tenor of the Presidential campaign. I’m not surprised, mind you, nor are you, I’m sure. While we might have hoped that the candidates and their surrogates would “take the high road” and focus on issues in substantive ways, this fall promises to be the meanest, nastiest, most vitriolic campaign in our nation’s history. I am sick of it already, and it’s not even Labor Day, the traditional “kick-off” date for the campaigns.
To make matters worse, I find many of my friends, both real and “virtual,” pouring gasoline on the flames of division and divisiveness. No sooner are words out of the mouths of the candidates (or some talking head supporting one or the other of them) and – BAM! – social media is riddled with outrage. My friends (who tend to be left-leaning) are quick to both create and forward postings about the latest affront or indignity uttered by their conservative counterparts, often without taking the time to step away from the keyboard, much less to check the facts.
Why, I wonder, do people who ordinarily behave in compassionate ways, support and perpetuate the vitriol that we’re so quick to bemoan? Is it just too easy to pass along a degrading comment about a political opponent with the push of a button? Are we trying to come across as “hip” or clever to our friends, most of whom are already aligned with our position already? We’re certainly not seeking to lift the political discourse out of the gutter that it’s in. Many of us wouldn’t dream of uttering in public many of the accusations we hurl online, yet we hit the “like” or “share” button with reckless abandon. And that makes us participants in, and part of, the problem
As people of faith (no matter what faith you subscribe to), we are called to seek out the best in ourselves and in others. That doesn’t just apply to our flesh and blood selves, but to our online identities as well. In our lives we stand in solidarity against schoolyard bullying. We march for human rights and the doctrine of inclusion. Some of us proclaim loudly and proudly that we “Stand on the Side of Love.” Yet behind the protection of our keyboards and our computers we don’t think twice about “othering” and even demonizing those who don’t share our political viewpoint or who see the solutions to our problems differently than we do.
Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against moral outrage and indignation. We need to voice, both loudly and clearly, our concerns and our solutions. We should advocate for our positions and our candidates. But when we mock, degrade and vilify those who think differently than we do, we debase not just them, but ourselves and the very democracy that we all so dearly treasure.
As we become inevitably immersed in this mean season, I invite you to join me in striving to live up to the principles of our faith, of your faith (whatever it is), no matter how hard that might be. In the language of Unitarian Universalism, let’s ask ourselves how might we continue to “affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity” of our political opponents? How might we remember to strengthen, rather than degrade, the strands of the interdependent web of which we’re all a part? Let’s consider how we might, in the words of Jesus, love not just our friends, but our “enemies” as well? Perhaps it begins by simply taking a breath before we hit “share” or “like” on our Facebook page. May that be our spiritual practice in the weeks and months ahead.
This day, and every day, I wish you peace.
Peter
Games Without Frontiers
Like so many people I’ve been talking to these past two weeks, I am a complete Olympics junkie. You can only guess what has been occupying most of my nights for the past two weeks. For me, though, the experience of this year’s Olympic Summer Games has been missing something, and I struggled early on to figure out what it was.
And then I realized one night, the day after Usain Bolt’s amazing win in the men’s 100 meter race, that his medal ceremony was the very first time all week that I had heard a national anthem for a country other than the U.S. or Great Britain. “The Jamaican National Anthem,” I cried with glee. And suddenly, I knew what I was missing.
When Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the modern Olympic games, he did so with an understanding that nations that meet in battle on the sporting field would develop relationships with one another than might make them less likely to meet in battle in war. Athletes are sent representing their country of origin and asked to be in community with their colleagues from all over the world. Spectators are afforded the chance to marvel when people from other nations excel at their sports.
The world sat transfixed as Usain Bolt ran at these Olympics. It mattered very little whether one was Jamaican or not—his speed and ability were worthy of admiration. Similarly, I imagine people all over the world looking on in wonder as Gabby Douglas flew above the uneven parallel bars or as Rebecca Soni set a world record (and then broke it again the next day).
And while the United States did win a whole lot of medals at these games, the “Star Spangled Banner” was not the only anthem to be played in London. It was marvelous to see Usain Bolt singing along to “Jamaica, Land We Love.” I would have loved to see some others. Kazakhstan’s for example (did you know it was played six times at these Olympics?)—a web search for their anthem turns up the fake one from “Borat” more easily than their actual national song.
Maybe, just maybe, we could have learned something about these amazing athletes and the countries they call home, too. What was it like being the first women representing Saudi Arabia? We missed a golden chance to interview the two people who could have answered that question. How do the people of Malaysia feel about winning a diving medal for the very first time? Or the people of Grenada about their nation’s first medal ever?
Maybe we could have found out how the wars our own nation has fought for the past decade in Afghanistan and Iraq have changed the lives of the athletes from those nations. Or learned from Japanese athletes about their country’s recovery from natural and nuclear disaster. Perhaps we could have developed some compassion for athletes from places where poverty and disease run rampant, where many people don’t know the source of their next meal, or simply where millions of dollars are not available for athletic training programs.
“Do you remember when Jim McKay did the coverage and they used to do a piece about an athlete from another country and something about the place they lived? It was a great way to learn about the world,” my friend Patricia wrote on my Facebook wall this week.
Yes, Patricia, it was a great way to learn about the world. It was a great way to break down the divisions we humans put up so often. It was a great way to cross the borders of difference and understanding. It was a great way to move us one step closer to the Olympic ideal of world peace, where nationalism is reserved for silly games and not war.