Mindful Living: The Peaceful Patriot 

Marshmallow Fields Forever
(Sung to the tune of Strawberry Fields Forever)

By Cybele Werts
CybeleW@aol.com  
www.supertechnogirl.com 


This Fourth of July I toasted some marshmallows on an outdoor fireplace that looks like a wrought iron birdcage. I'd picked them up last minute because I'd been driving past this farm and saw these three-foot high marshmallows dotting the field. Actually, they were straw bales wrapped in white plastic, but they looked just like marshmallows, the kind a giant might toast. Further down the farmers had laid down fifteen of the marshmallows and spray painted "Burg Boyz 2004" on them. "These aren't your stereotypical taciturn Vermont farmers" I thought. The Burg Boys could be a pack of marauding cow kidnappers for all I know, but I'll tell you this, it turns me on that they proclaim themselves with such gusto.

I was particularly charmed because, it being the Fourth of July, I was thinking a lot about patriotism and the freedoms I hold dear. The Burg Boyz' proclamation of self is a pretty benign expression of the first amendment: freedom of speech, but an expression nevertheless. On the less benign end is my friend who is a political writer and sometimes has to use a pseudonym because of the controversial nature of what she writes. Even so, she says, she never feels all that much at risk because she lives here in the United States where even if she does foment insurrection, she's got that freedom of speech thing all the way down to the bone. We've all had it infused into our brains since childhood and we take it for granted. She too has a writer friend, this one in Aphganistan who takes no such thing for granted. He lives in a very different world, where even the benign Burg Boyz might be silenced.

Patriotism has gotten a bit of a bad rap I think. It's come to be associated with redneck conservatives who snarl things like "love it or leave it" or "guns don't kill people, people kill people" at me. On the first, I'd say that democracy by definition demands that we speak up when someone or something is being wronged, rather than escaping to someplace where things are theoretically better. On the latter, they're right of course. On the most literal and superficial level, guns don't actually kill anyone all by their lonesome. But they are a way of killing that makes it far easier to do than were you actually required to take the knife and stick it into my mother your father her brother his sister. The United States has more gun deaths than any other first world country. That's about people and culture, not about guns. And just so you know I'm not a complete liberal pansy, I own a rifle myself and don't claim objectivity.

Those taglines are the shouted noise I hear when the topic is patriotism, particularly during a time of war. It becomes "unpatriotic" to resist the war, which I most certainly do. Despite this, I think of myself as quite patriotic. After all, I get all weepy when I hear God Bless America. Even with my weeping, I'd rather be guided by the bumper sticker I saw last week which said "God Bless the Whole World. No Exceptions." Songs like God Bless America, no matter how beautiful and moving they are, define Americans as "better." We are definitely more blessed than the Iraqis, and likely more blessed than just about everyone else. Once you start putting yourself or your country above the other, it makes it acceptable to kill that "other." We're doing that, and getting killed ourselves too. Us peaceniks only become patriotic when our boys and girls start coming back in more body bags than we bargained for.

I learned some of these gun things in Director Michael Moore's movie about firearms, Bowling for Columbine and the political stuff from his Fahrenheit 9/11. I think of Michael as being somewhat next to godliness. He has the balls to get out there and make his voice heard, and finally, he's getting the audience he deserves. When I said something to this effect at a dinner party last week, one of those taciturn farmer types looked across at me like I was the devil's spawn. Being as the table was chock full of your more common Vermont liberal intellectual types, he was outgunned and so spoke not a word. But I felt the hostility emanate across my portabella mushroom ravioli and right into my heart.

He was outgunned just as Michael Moore and I were both until recently. We are patriots because we are willing to speak up when things suck, or discuss gun control issues even when those issues get freakishly murky because you can't make gun owners the "other." After all… I'm the other. It's not the democratic process or even gun control that brings a tear to my eye. It's the freedom I have as a woman to live my own way. I can go where I want, write what I wish, and spend my money any way I like. I have career choices that even my mother could not imagine. I can write my spirituality column and know I have every right to believe, think, and write however God moves me. I can own that rifle or not. I am a free woman, and that's not something that has meaning in all that many countries, even first world ones. And yes, because of our economic strength, I can choose from one of a hundred kinds of desserts, including toasted marshmallows.

In celebration of my freedoms this year, I'm planning to make chocolate-dipped marshmallow lollypops. I'll sprinkle them with sprinkles and serve them at the next picnic under my Vermont skies. I am thankful for the economic, political, and social freedoms that make this marshmallow lollypop possible. You laugh perhaps, but when the Burg Boys come by to ask me why I wrote about them, or perhaps why I am a patriot, I'll point to those marshmallow lollypops and say "the answer is right there. Help yourself."

Burg Boyz 2004

Chocolate Dipped 
Marshmallow Lollypops

Michael Moore's Cool Website
http://www.michaelmoore.com/ 

Copyright 2004

Reprinting Information
Would you like to reprint this column? If so, do ask! I usually allow distribution because spiritually speaking, sharing ideas is an important way of expressing my faith. Please e-mail me at CybeleW@aol.com