I hope you have found a way to keep cool during what feels like the heat wave of my 36 years! I ran yesterday morning and during the last mile or so, I felt I like I was gulping oven air…

So on to the topic of today…It all started when I about six years old…At least that is as far back that I can remember feeling a certain way…At that time I lived in a black neighborhood just off Camp Creek Parkway…but I went a white private elementary school miles away….and on top of that, my parents had thick Jamaican accents…I was an outsider without question…So what did that little girl do…A lot of the time I found myself by myself…By the time I got to the sixth grade, I convinced my parents to send me to public school…but they chose a white public school miles away from our College Park neighborhood…in fact, it took over an hour for my brother and I to get to our schools in Sandy Springs…and because I was black and from way across town, I was an outsider there too….And by the time I got to high school age and actually convinced my parents to send me to the neighborhood high school, nothing had changed…I was still an outsider there too because I was ridiculed for “talking white” and because they hadn’t known me since elementary school…

But by then, it was all good…I had gotten accustomed to my outsider status, and I relished hanging around other people who felt like oddballs too…people who didn’t have the best clothes, people who had strict parents, people who were “lames,” people who weren’t the prettiest or the most popular, people who dressed in all black and wore skull jewelry, people who rode skateboards and hung out at Little Five Points – those were the people that I wanted to be around…

That’s why there is a part of me that totally gets famous author Anne Rice’s (author of “Interview with the Vampire”) recent announcement via Facebook…

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of …Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten …years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

While I don’t agree with all of Anne’s views, I get where she is coming from…I have literally been going to church all of my life, and I became an official Christian myself when I was about 13 years old…But I have struggled with what has been widely perceived as Christian — at least in the South…Yeah, I’m blessed and highly favored as a Christian but I’m not always going to say that because it’s just weird…And even if I never get  filthy rich, I still feel that I am prosperous…And sometimes the people that say that they are sanctificed all of the time seem like they are just fakin’….I could go on but this is the Internet…

But I love, love, love Jesus…And He was the ultimate outsider….He didn’t care for the religious people of the day either…He preferred the prostitutes, the liars, the poor, the humble….Although Jesus was blessed and highly favored, He didn’t always say that…And Jesus was not rich while He was on earth and didn’t seem to be into material goods that much either…and He chastised the religious people of the day for acting like they were God’s favorite while their thoughts betrayed them…

I don’t know what God thinks of Anne Rice’s Facebook announcement, but I don’t have to…I do know that if she is sincere in her faith in Christ, He will lead her to His truth…

Any thoughts?

This song reminds me of my outsider childhood…

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