UP FROM THE EARTHBOUND MEME

Call me a political gadfly. These past months I bumped along rural byways on a campaign bus, shook hands of strangers and smiled with new friends, held up signs, stood at stump speeches, applauded, sometimes whooped to resonate my candidate’s sound bites. This month you’ll find Bud, myself, and five other folks smiling high in the Deep South sky on billboards, both vinyl and electric.

I cringed when MBH (My Beloved Hubby) pointed out one of the interstate billboards to my left coast, petite sister on a quick business/ family trip here. She apparently still had that perfect, not fuzzy mono-vision God gave her since birth.

“Ooh, that’s Cindy! You’re [my political party]?? Why is he wearing glasses?” she questioned.

Up high in the sky, taller than the group Bud stood wearing large cosmetic glasses. I bought them to disguise my ID, instead, my youngest ended up wearing them at the photo shoot.

Professional photographer, Mick, usually shot newspaper sports stills of athletes assembled in rows, with trophies or ribbons emblazoned. So Mick grouped us in front of a backdrop sheet, our faces emblazoned with smiles, with this printed beside us: Please Vote . . .

I thought he would frame us, as we were-- laughing, chatty, loving each other’s company. Instead we quietly smiled at the lens, one Black woman, two Hispanics (South American, Central American), and four Pinoys (two from the States, two from the Philippines). In ethnic variations we shared fundamentals that honored each individual.

My ears prickled over recent racial aspersions cast on my Deep South community. The ghosts of ugly sheeted racists, aren’t they still in this place?  In the rural diners the campaign bus went to, did they still have separate eating counters?

We don’t need the cultural Halloween meme to remind us. The original racist, Lucifer, has his minions lurk not just south but about every compass point. In Gollum fixation he craves an earthbound power grab victory. He perverts eternally loved souls to live life shallow and quick, chained to deadly stuff/self absorption.

Yet the nonfiction tome, The Bible affirms that Lucifer loses, big time, to God. Its author Jesus came, bled, died, and rose to free souls. Unshackled we can live and love anybody, any person of any color, deep and forever, via God, the Perfect Lover of your soul.

We believers will get where we are going, up on the far side of the sky, our tears wiped, trials banished,  death terminated.  From every ethnicity, in a thousand lingual tongues we will laugh, chat, and loving each other’s company.

When I Get Where I'm Going @ Yahoo! Video