Lost Soul

Some communities have a soul. You can feel it when you drive into the communities. You can see it in the faces. You can see the pride in the way the people carry themselves. You can see it in how the citizens treat one another. How all are included, or excluded.

What kills the soul of a community? Hate. Disdain for the 'others.' Disdain for your neighbors. Exclusivity related to a religion. False pride. Disrespect toward others. Silence in the face of evil. Hate is evil.

All you have to do is read the Las Cruces Sun-News with its daily deaths at the hands of citizens by way of love and jealousy and alcohol, gang rivalries, child-molesters, and the occasional death at the hands of a church-blessed police.

Sunny skies cannot hide the ongoing City Hall-organized disdain for non-Christians, and even the local Christians. All citizens who may want to observe by sitting or those addressing the City Council will do so standing before an Inquisitional dais resplendent with the large Christian crosses of the Trinity on the back wall. The public podium has its own smaller version of the Christian crosses. The City Councilors look at the crosses, not the citizen speaking. Unbelieving readers should check http://www.las-cruces.org/. And the City's own TV channel for the promotion of religion.

The dangling of Christian crosses or symbols made from them on every piece of public property is truly insulting. But those dedicated evangelicals in the City government wear their hate with pride and their concern of others is minuscule.

The City's soul is lost. It will continue to be lost as long as hate and disdain for others is the rule. Some churches believe the human soul belongs to those churches; some people believe their soul belongs to whatever god they ascribe to or to nature; and some people do not believe in a 'soul.'

Whatever the belief about human souls is, it is personal. The soul of a city belongs to no religion or deity as some would want. The soul of a city belongs to the people of that city to make it viable or not. So far, the city of Las Cruces has chosen to selfishly discard the idea of viability.