OpEd: Invitation to Tailgate

What if the more uncomfortable you were, the more inclusive you were being?

And what if you didn't have to be uncomfortable being inclusive at all? What if it were just a choice?

I shared a story from another news source on my Facebook about a week ago about a football coach in Washington state whose right to the free expression of religion was upheld by the Supreme Court. It's easy for those who are left-leaning to blame the courts for everything we disagree on based on the recent overturning of Roe vs. Wade, which was a part of the right-wing evangelical political agenda.

It's also very easy to blame each other based on where you fall on the political spectrum, particularly if your worldviews are vastly different from each other. What if it didn't matter who were right or wrong? What if no one were right or wrong? And what if everything were just an interesting point-of-view?

Interesting point-of-view is a tool that I learned from Access Consciousness, but in reality, I had been doing it to some extent my entire life. It was just implicit. I have always been in curiosity about the world around me. However, that did not stop me from creating conclusions. When you create a conclusion, then you will not budge. You will remain steadfast in your delusion of right and wrong about XYZ because, for you, there is no other reality possible.

That's because I have the "dis-ease" of being a thinker, of nailing myself to the logic of conclusion, and making real the idea that there is a objective right or wrong way to do things in this world. I am recovering from this and wholly intent on losing my mind, whatever it takes. You may think that I am crazy for saying that, but I am not. We're nothing but kids on a playground called Planet Earth. Everything else is form and structure that we've created.

And it's not wrong. It's just what we've chosen. What else can we choose now, I wonder?

When I was a kid in the schoolyard, I often played alone sitting in the grass, watching the insects, playing with the dirt, plucking out dandelions, and running my fingers through blades of grass. This was because other kids did not want to include me, and if they did include me I was always a bystander in whatever we were playing. For example, if we were playing house, I was the neighbor who lived alone and no one visited. And that's when I was not being bullied, when times were good.

I longed for inclusion that never came. So I sat for most of my life on the sidelines until I found out that I could just play a different game, and that's why I chose to become a writer.

The coach in question in the story I shared is a Christian who was expressing his faith, and students joined him. Many people believe that the Supreme Court's decision violates the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and it doesn't. It's a stretch to even call this an endorsement of religion. The coach acted on his own after a game, and some students chose to join him. That's their choice.

Apparently, some kids felt pressured to join in, even though it did not fit their beliefs. So what? Does that make the coach or those who did join in wrong? No, it doesn't.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a fan of religion. I have not been affiliated with any church or religious institution for the past 25 years, and I even spent some of my younger years being extremely caustic to anyone who bought religion, especially the Christian religion, as real. So it's not my agreement with the man's point-of-view that has me questioning things. It's that it's not an establishment or an endorsement of religion. It's man's choice to exercise his freedom of religion. And it's your choice to express your own freedoms or to repress them at the detriment of whatever may bring you joy and meaning in this life.

What if instead of being worried about how kids who are not of the majority will react to things based on emotional implication (ie. peer pressure conflicting with familial belonging), we raised kids who were conscious enough to ask questions, start conversations with others and with their parents, and were able to make choices for themselves? You can't protect your children or anyone on this planet from sometimes being uncomfortable; that's part of living in this reality. And maybe you're an atheist, and your child may be interested in Christianity. That's OK too. Suppressing a child's natural curiosity is just a form of control and doesn't not respect your child as a living being who has choice.

What you can choose is to be you and create a different reality. For example, if you care so much about the non-Christian students who feel pressured to join the coach in the story I shared, then what can you do to include everyone? I'll give you a clue. It's not in banning anything. Banning anything is not how we include people.

For example, you could create a tailgate party in the parking lot directly after the game and invite everyone, including the Christian students, if they'd like to join in after their prayers. That's inclusivity. That's having no judgment, and that's creating space for everyone.

Regardless of whether or not I fit in with the majority, I recognize their right to exist and to be in accordance with their own worldviews. We don't have to match each other to co-exist. We all have a place here. Being afraid that the Christian right is going to takeover is a far-stretch of the present reality; and the harder you fight against something, the more in effect of it you will be, meaning, you will actually create that which you go against as your reality. Instead, invite those that you disagree with to the table and see what they can receive from you. The more you are willing to gift to others and to be kind to others, they more the rest of the world will gift to you.

Disclaimer: The views presented in this article are my own as an individual. I do not represent any government or corporate entities or individuals mentioned in this article. If you are interested in Access Consciousness, please view their official website or social media channels to learn more.