Opinion : A prayer for the Occupiers

     Some call me a skeptic. Others, a cynic. A few, even, use words like oddball.

     Whatever.

     I dance for rain to the beat of a different tomtom.

     It's just that I often don't see things the way others see them. And when I hear a cliché, I often end up restating it.

     For example, Christians for years have been inspired by the "Footprints" poem, which tells about how a man walked with God, and could see two sets of footprints. But at times, when life seemed most difficult, he saw only one set of footprints. When he asked God to explain, God said, "When life was hardest, that's when I carried you."

     In my version, however, God says, "My son, my beloved child: When you look back on your life and saw that through the difficult times, there was only one set of footprints, well it was then that you were trying to do it on your own, silly."

      I saw a similar inspirational saying on a Facebook status update a few days ago:   

I asked God for a flower and he gave me a garden.

I asked him for a tree and he gave me a forest

I asked him for a river and he gave me an ocean

I asked god for a friend and he gave me you…

     How sweet.

     How inspiring.

     How completely inaccurate.

     When we ask God for a tree, he does not give us a forest. He gives us a seed (or sends the Burgess spring catalog).

     That poem should read: "I asked God for an Oak tree. He gave me an acorn and told me to plant it carefully, water it often, make sure to not mow it off in the summer, and maybe some day, I will have an oak."

     The first issue of The Occupied Washington Post (OWP), while better in quality than the first edition of The Occupied Wall Street Journal, contains the same kinds of nonsensical, accusatory whining: "Corporations are not concerned with the common good. They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress kill and lie to make money."

     The OWP also contains a story about how the Occupy Washington movement is looking for help from "faith-based communities."

     While not using the G-word, the OWP editors wrote a lengthy article about why religious people should help the Occupiers, and the relationship the occupiers hope to have with churches and other religious organizations. That relationship, of course, focuses solely on what those religious groups can do for those who choose to occupy rather than work.

    While the theme for much of the Occupy protestors is "Gimme, gimme gimme," the theme for faith-based organization cooperation is "Gimme, gimme, gimme in the name of your deity."

     The OWP is much more articulate than the OWSJ, and its editors share some goals that I have been yelling about in my columns for years: Get money out of politics. Get away from oil as our main energy source.

     But like most of the occupier literature I have read, the OWP shares lots of nonsense about the "1 percent."

     Did you know that the top 1 percent of U.S. taxpayers pay 36 percent of all income taxes, according to the IRS?

     I bet you won't read that in the next issue of OWP.

     I thought about the inspirational saying about God giving us a forest as I watched the latest news from Occupy Whatever.

     When I first began making plans to build our house on Grandpa Paul's land, I asked God for a forest. Then I started planting seedlings. I hauled water to the site several times until the trees were big enough to survive on their own. I carefully mowed around them. Now, along the road, I have a forest of beautiful yellow poplar trees. God, indeed, has given me a forest.

     Speaking of trees and protests, it also occurs to me that the Occupiers are kin to the Earth Day protestors. A half century ago, we, as a nation, celebrated Arbor Day. We planted millions of trees. Now, in too many places, Arbor Day celebrations and tree plantings have been replaced by Earth Day protests which contain lots of talk, but little to no tree planting.

     It occurred to me the other day, as I saw my small poplar forest, that it's time to offer a prayer for the Occupiers.

     "I asked God for a better country. He gave me freedom and told me to use my hands to do more than carry a sign."  

     While many people will judge the Occupy movement by how it changes society, I will judge the Occupiers by if, and how, their protests change them, and by what they do, or don't do, when the protests are over.