The Bible version of God doesn’t ring true to me. I don’t believe in any traditional sort of God.  I am not that sort of person who finds any purpose in worshipping or asking favors from invisible Beings.  I don’t ascribe any emotions or sentience (certainly, no vindictiveness) to any Person or Thing that might have created our universe.  How the universe came into being is beyond what I can know. 

I do cherish my universe, though, and I realize that I am an incredibly tiny and incredibly ignorant part of it. Many fervent believers (though not all) would characterize my beliefs as “atheism” although that word, as commonly construed, would characterize me in a misleadingly cartoonish way.  

Given my beliefs, most people would be surprised to hear that I sometimes go to church to be inspired and energized. What’s my secret?  I go to church when no one else is there—I like to go to empty churches.  When nothing else is going on other than one’s own breathing, meditating, thinking and writing, going to church can even be exhilarating.

With a pad of paper and a pen in my hands, in search of solitude, I walked to church twice this week.  I had previously noticed a huge church a few blocks from a courthouse where I sometimes work.  Only after walking to this church on Monday did I learn that it was called “Saint Peter’s Roman Catholic Cathedral” in Belleville, Illinois.  Here’s a photo I took on Wednesday (yes, a dreary looking day), just prior to my second “visit.”

The majestic interior of the church is also a treat to the eyes.  The thick stone walls morph into the peak of the ceiling as they rise to meet each other 70 feet in the air. 

               
Even on a dreary day, the natural light works its way into every pew.  Every tiny noise launches up into that vast inner-space like a dissipating butterfly. This incredible space, and the solitude it allows, more than make up for the musty church smell and the uncomfortable pews.  We mustn’t complain about uncomfortable pews, we were told as children.  After all, Jesus had nails driven through his hands for us.

When a church is empty, the overly-pious stained-glass images do not antagonize me.  (more…)

My government’s violent occupation of Iraq has not flustered me nearly as much as the nonchalance of half of America.  Why are so many Americans utterly complacent about the wretched and rampant killing going on in our names?  Is it possible that we have become confused and seduced by the magnitude of the killings and by the music?  Allow me to explain.

First, the magnitude.  Stalin’s well-cited quote comes to mind: “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.”  Perhaps the immoral nature of Bush’s aggression would be clearer had Bush caused the death of only one man.  Imagine this hypothetical: 

President Bush looks out the window of the oval office and sees a man wearing a backpack walking down the sidewalk.  In a dry-drunkish paranoid moment, Bush tells his security officers that the man walking down the sidewalk has nuclear weapons grade aluminum tubes in his backpack and orders his guards to capture “that terrorist.”  While capturing the man with the backpack (it turns out to be empty), a U.S soldier is accidentally shot by friendly fire of a fellow soldier.

It is later disclosed that, one minute before giving his order to capture the man, a former ambassador had advised Bush the man wearing the backpack had just been searched and that he was not carrying anything dangerous.  Then it came out that Bush and his highest advisers had intentionally blown the cover of a CIA agent to discredit the former ambassador.

“Such unforgivable lying,” the American people would immediately conclude. George W. Bush can no longer be trusted to be the President. He made up a story and needlessly caused a soldier to die.”

Perhaps this example seems outlandish, but how can it be any less outlandish than what has actually occurred in Iraq?  There, the deception of this Administration has so far caused the deaths of 2,500 U.S. soldiers and 100,000 Iraqi adults and children.  Yet to many, the deaths of these thousands seems less horrible than the death of one.  When we read of one child drowning or one adult killed by a carjacker, we wince.  When we hear that another 50 people were killed in Iraq each day, we simply throw it on a ethereal pile of statistics in our minds. Though Stalin’s idea seems counter-intuitive, I have no better explanation.

Is it possible that music is also to blame?  “That’s absurd,” many would say.  How could that be?  (more…)

Americans agree strongly that it was a mistake for the United States to invade Iraq:

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll last month found that 59 percent of Americans say the United States erred in going to war in Iraq. Among Democrats, 84 percent said the war was a mistake, up from 59 percent in 2003.

Because this is a highly charged issue on which so many Americans disagree with the Bush administration, it is easy to turn on the radio and hear lots of songs protesting the war, right?  Wrong.  Just try to find protest songs on big-corporate radio.  You won’t succeed.  There is nothing about big corporate media that is more conspicuous by its absence. 

Stephan Smith-Said writes that musicians are composing and singing protest music, but they are not being heard on corporate-owned media: 

They’re on the “don’t add” list at corporate radio stations, where they’ve increasingly been placed since FCC deregulation paved the way for the monopolization of the industry. 

This issue is not hitting getting some more attention in light of Neil Young’s new anti-Bush album, “Living with War,” which is a lonely exception to the rule. Smith-said writes that music produced by the corporate model is “all based on sales, not on social consciousness.”

Stephan Smith-Said is an Iraqi American songwriter whose father’s family lives under the daily threat of bombing in Baghdad and Mosul. His newest single, “Another World Is Possible,” has been released for free at his website StephanSmith.com.  For a video version of Smith-Said’s “The Bell,” click here.