I was always fascinated by the miscellaneous items in the back of the hymnals in the churches I attended while growing up. Most of the hymnals had various compendiums of prayers, creeds, and popular ceremonial call-and-response scripts.As a youth, I didn't really know that preachers, like lots of public speakers, recycle their material. (For any of you who have seen more than one of my public speaking engagements, you know that I learned that recycling lesson very well! :-) ) But there was also an aspect, for me, of feeling like I'd pulled back the curtains and could see a little bit of the inner workings of what was usually a fairly mysterious church. Kind of like when you can hear the director's commands during a television show, ordering the camera to move and the anchorman to cut to the weatherman. A little like knowing how the magic trick works.As I grew older, I began to appreciate a different "inner workings" aspect of the prayers and ceremonies in the back of the hymnal. Reading things like wedding and funeral ceremonies, the Apostle's Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the other statements of faith contained in the back of the hymnal gave me more insight into faith, and into the religious tradition in which I was being raised. It also gave me the chance to think about my own faith, my own relationship to the Church and to a higher power.What made me think back to the Sunday morning boredom of my youth? Today I was driving home from running some errands and listening to my beloved XM Satellite Radio and my beloved afternoon fare, The Randi Rhodes Show. As Randi closed her show today, she played a recording of a man reading a message of defiance over an instrumental version of The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony:
I am not leaving!Please hear what I said.I am not leaving!
I’m staying where I’m at, thank you very much.And as long as I stand upon her soil,She will be my Land of the Free.As long as I believe what I believe,You will see the meaning of Brave!
I will not, under threat of tyranny or mob,Toss the place that I love in the ashen pile of lost causes,And walk quietly into a meaningless mist!
No,I will stay.And youwill listen!
You will not lecture me about values!You will not receive the exclusive rights to my morality!
Please hear what I said.For wherever I stand upon her soil,I am the deep well of my beloved country’s finest values and highest morals:Fairness, compassion, wisdom, strength, common sense, tolerance.And you shall tremble before them, for they are righteous!
So let the cheers for my demise die this night in a million throats!Let the gloating turn to great and frightening doubt! For I am not leaving!
My beloved country needs me now more than ever she has before.And I pledge my allegiance to that which she still is,And to that great and shining day that she has yet to live!
I'm not sure where Randi Rhodes got this moving monologue or what it's called, but I've decided to call it my Liberal Creed. (When I find out where it came from, I'll amend this post to give it appropriate credit.) But its simple message of fierce love of country, and defiance of those who would hijack it, stopped me in my tracks precisely because I'd been questioning how welcome I have been feeling in my own country these last few days.Since the alleged victory of George W. Bush, many liberals and moderates -- and even some true conservatives who feel betrayed by our neo-con President -- have found ourselves questioning what America has become, and whether it has left us behind. The Neo-Con Media Elite have even been reporting a surge in interest in emigration to Canada.Canada is a beautiful country! The population is very friendly, Toronto and Vancouver are gorgeous, they let you get married regardless of gender, let you smoke pot, get cold and colder running Labatt's from your faucets, all while giving you free health insurance. What's not to love?But as the man said: "I'm staying where I'm at, thank you very much. As long as I believe what I believe, you will see the meaning of Brave!"So, put away the mittens, eh? Stand up in your churches, in your workplaces, in your schools, in your communities, and recite the Liberal Creed. This is our country and she needs us now more than ever she has before! And to paraphrase that batshit old crank Charlton Heston, you can have my country when you pry it from my cold dead hands.