Category: Words

I am not a patriot.
I am not proud to be an American.

That’s a strange thing to say just after Election Day, isn’t it? It was even stranger when I first wrote it, on 9/11. I do not understand how a person can proud to be a particular nationality that is determined purely by luck of birth.

Are there some countries that are better or more progressive or more prosperous than others? Freer? Absolutely. If you have done something to contribute to that, you should be proud–but is merely being lucky enough to have been born with a certain nationality a reason for pride? Not in my opinion.

It’s not that I think being an American is bad, but how is it better than being Swedish, French, Canadian or a citizen of any other perfectly good country?
Don’t misunderstand me–I don’t think that being American is something to be ashamed of, but neither is being North Korean, Libyan, Russian or Cuban. They are places in the world where people are born, like all places.

I consider myself lucky to have been born here, rather than some of those places, but I do not think I have done anything to deserve this good fortune. At least not before I was born–and maybe not all that much since.

I am grateful to live here, but not proud. Where you are born is an accident. Nothing more, or nothing less.

That being said, I do wonder how the proudly nationalistic Americans among us can be so proud that they were born in the USA while simultaneously being so sure that the children being born in the USA now are destroying the country. The babies being born today or no more or less deserving of citizenship than any of the rest of us were.

We are simply hating the new arrivals in the tradition of our ancestors who hated the Irish, German, Jews and Italians who came before us.

What should you be proud of?

Getting an education. Serving others in some way. Hard work. Raising your children to be caring people. Using your talents. Being kind. Fighting for a more just world. Being a foster parent. Adopting a stray animal.

Me? I am proud of my brother and Mom for working their asses off and becoming nurses. Not only nurses, but the kind of nurses who are able to care for the most critically ill people around. I am proud of all of my friends and relatives who have served in the military and Peace Corps.

I consider myself fortunate to have been born in a place where I was allowed to become who I am. A person who is allowed to express my opinions, even if they might not be particularly popular. In many places, I might not have been allowed those opportunities.

People all over the planet are tearing each other to pieces over what amounts to an accident. Patriotism can be a dangerous thing.

Be proud of who you make yourself, not the place where you just happened to come into being. It’s who you are, not where you are that is the most important thing.

Mara sat on the front porch swinging her feet and looked up at one of those dense puffy gray clouds. She wondered out loud about how inviting and soft they look.

“No, they’re thick and cold,” said Samael. “Unimaginably cold. When you fly through them, it’s completely dark and the cold suffocates you. It’s like flying through frozen cotton candy made of shattered fragments of glass.The ice shreds you. When you finally get through the clouds to open sky, you are covered with frozen cuts that melt and leave you slick with blood when your body finally warms up again. There’s not much worse than having to fly through a cloud.”

There was always something new to learn about an angel. Mara knew he could fly, but didn’t think that meant he went beyond the clouds.

He told her that no one liked to fly large distances because of the cold and the friction of the wind that was generated if you flew faster than the wind currents. It is too uncomfortable. Angels prefer to use other portals to travel when at all possible, and in most cases the battles they fight are in other times or in places not accessible directly from Earth.

“So that’s why I just see you suddenly walking out of nowhere? Portals?”

Samael nodded, and made a vague gesture around the house.
“There are several in the fields and woods around your house, no one knows about them. Not any more.”

“Any more? People knew about them before? When? Is it dangerous?”

“Not people. I am taking care of them. Nothing will hurt you.”

Mara looked up at Samael and knew he would not tell her what the things were that he took care of or where they came from. She also knew she didn’t want to know what they would do to her if they came through one of the portals.

“Not people, my treasure. Such monsters do not have a place in this world. It would be very bad for one to come through. I am trying to make sure it does not happen. It is a difficult fight. There are some things that are not easy, even for a Destroyer.”

“Is that why you stayed away so often when you first got here? That time you came home so badly hurt?”

Suddenly Mara found herself standing, tucked behind Samael’s wings, his entire body alert.

The creature, who was supposed to be dead, walked toward Samael from the field with its arms outspread. In what appeared, to Mara, to be a motion of surrender or to show it was not carrying weapons.

Later, she would not be able to say exactly why she thought of it as a creature rather than a person. It looked human. It wore jeans and a white t-shirt and walked on two legs. Upright. With an apparently human gait.

She wasn’t quite sure when she noticed the creature left no footprints. Or that he hadn’t stirred up a bit of dust walking down the dirt road in front of the house.

She wouldn’t be able to define how she knew that the creature was neither dead nor exactly alive. It was the same way she knew that Samael could tell the creature was there and wanted her to go in the house. The same way she knew that being unarmed was not the same thing as being harmless. She was closing the door just as Samael launched himself through the air at the creature.

The last thing Mara saw as the door swung shut was a shimmer at the edge of the field where Samael and the creature disappeared.

Mara got a bottle of beer from the fridge, and sat back down on the front porch with a book. She might as well pretend to read while she waited.

It would help her pretend she wasn’t terrified.