Talk health. The dreary, never-changing tale
Of mortal maladies is worn and stale.
You cannot charm, or interest, or please
By harping on that minor chord, disease.
Say you are well, or all is well with you,
And God shall hear your words and make them true.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox

What a nightmare to be a Christian Scientist during this time.  I call it a government panic, you might call it a global pandemic; someone talks about people dying, I cling to eternal life.  Faith is the cure to all disease and conceivable woe, in my opinion—but if faith in a higher power is an offensive concept like talking politics at the dinner table, let’s talk about faith in our bodies…

I believe in this amazing body I got at birth.  It’s fully equipped with extras!  An amazing immune system, a brain so I can think for myself what works for my particular path in life… My own personal path to health, to joy, to love—some even still talk of Heaven!  Call it peace of mind, eventually having Faith in more than just your physical body, doing good things and thinking of others before yourself.

Western medicine sells theories as “fact,” that the world and us weren’t created right, so we need to put a mask over it.  Hogwash.  I have never become truly sick while my life was in perfect balance… Exercising, open air living, a good diet, a mix of loving, playing, working—sleeping well.  Of course I haven’t.  Western medicine (doctors) will have you believe during their Virus Panic of 2020/2021 that we should be scared of each other!  We should stay away from each other… We shouldn’t trust the air, it’s bad… Our bodies and immune systems not good enough!

Hogwash.  Horse manure.  Untrue… I don’t buy it!  Western medicine has been selling their snake oil for hundreds of years, going up the skirt of the human bodies for all of life’s answers.  For them and believers in them, the physical is all, the body the key to long life, but I think they define “life” and in fact “health” differently than me.  I know what works for my health because I live with me.  How is a doctor or government going to know more about my health than me?

We have lived through a bad history of “conquest” (land theft), crime justified by a bible, and in that environment of forced civilization enters the often false science of Western medicine and its overpaid, over-trusted doctors.  What was their once-grand solution to fevers and bad physical health?  Blood-letting!  What’s still their number one activity in offices across the West?  Blood-drawing!  “Yes, little Billy, let’s see what’s wrong with you.  Once we find what’s wrong, we’ll prescribe you lots of healthy drugs!”

Drugs and blood-drawing.  Hogwash.  Overpaid doctors with diplomas granted by other doctors, a community of establishing fears and illnesses, then presenting themselves as the great cure… “Will this be cash or credit, Billy?”  Hogwash.  And dangerous… Fear is the most dangerous virus in the world today, the largest religion claiming to have a cure for it being Western medicine.

Allow me, please, to present another one—older, wiser and better:

Faith.  Faith in God.  Faith in a Higher Power, call it what you will.  Faith in Creation, in the sweet air of the country, away from the cities of doctors, hospitals and large bills… Faith in ourselves.  In this amazing body we were born with, in your own health when you make good decisions and live in a balanced fashion.  Leave the cities Rome pitched so violently across Europe, and that Columbus, the Spanish and English forced on Turtle Island, Aztlán, and other parts of formerly beautiful, peaceful land called “America” by egocentric, violent, ethnocentric Europeans.

Reject the Conquest.  Reject the armed theft.  Reject forced civilization, its noise and fake cures!  Keep blood inside your body, say no to Western medicine’s bloodletting and drugs, find your own definition for health and life—a more expansive one that is dreamt of in doctors’ philosophy.  Say no to the Kool-Aide, they’ve spiked it and have been for years!  Water beats beer, a walk in nature beats a doctor visit, and faith in God is the cure you’ve been hoping a mask over your face would bring.

To those addicted to Western medicine and civilization, my words might offend you, and what’s more you might snicker and wish me a related harm, saying: “Oh, just wait ‘til you get Covid virus, and you’ll feel differently.”  I did get Covid virus, I’m pretty sure.  A real pain in the rear end… actually my head!  There are lots of bummers out there to catch, but I will never say that Western medical doctors have all the answers, like gods in white coats.  Here’s my little account of catching a really bad bug back in March of 2020:

I picked up a weird virus… Something I had never felt before, a dramatic ache starting in the supermarket one day, then a strong three week fever.  No cold symptoms, just the fever and a horrible headache, which seemed an exaggeration of the one I had before picking up the virus.

I get sick when I’m off-balance in life; in this case I had been writing too much, eight days in a row without a break.  When I write a lot, I rest a lot.  If I rest too much, including the use of ice packs to my neck, I will develop a headache from too much pillow contact… That’s how I came into the supermarket that day, and I picked up an ugly bug.

I blame no one.  Not the little girl I met on the bus to town, whose mom said she had diarrhea and was heading to the doctor’s.  Not the people I greeted at the market, or anyone else on my bus… This was the beginning of the Covid-19 panic, and all the market employees were wearing masks, making me think I was searching for produce in a hospital emergency room.

There was fear of illness, my own headache and being off-balance, and there you go… I got the evil thing that was out there.  Was it Covid-19?  I’ll never know for sure, because I don’t go to doctors much or believe in Western medicine.  I’m sober eighteen years, live in the mountains, know what is healthy for me and do it (most of the time).  Doctors’ offices are overcrowded, over-air-conditioned and over-priced.  No thanks.  I fail to see the health there.

Drawing blood out of my body, where I always thought it would do the most good; giving me experimental drugs at a hint of depression; selling experimental science as if it were factual; compromising itself with politics, getting rich and those viper insurance companies hiking up already exorbitant prices!  No thanks.  I prefer the country, my faith in God, dabble in Christian Science—using the bible and prayer for a positive attitude and health.

But I did get sick!  I get sick about every other year… I admit, this one was wild, stayed with me for a couple months off and on, just that fever ickiness washing over me every once in a while… Sickness!  I got it because I was off-balanced and my immune system was down from its normal strength.  Did I get it because someone “infected me?”  Did I get it because I wasn’t wearing a mask?  Did I get it because I was not practicing the blatantly un-Christian concept of “social distancing?”  No.  No.  No.  I reject all those theories posing as facts for governments to use in their irresponsible, un-Christian, anti-spiritual, pro-Western medical, shady legislating.  Why shady?  The U.S. Government (or any other I know) has never defined the word “health…” That’s a big deal when laws try to address “health”-care!

I like good science.  X-rays are cool, for instance… Facts!  I’m saddened by the Covid-19 Panic of 2020/2021 for two reasons: 1. It’s bad spirituality on display and 2. it’s bad science as well.  Yelling out a virus’ name, being scared of it, obsessing about it creates a false god.  Religions which have cowered from the virus should be ashamed, re-read the Ten Commandments in the bible, and “Have no gods” before the One!  Yell out One name! Fear that!! Center thoughts on that, love and Faith, then we’ll say, “Where the heck did that silly virus go?”  It goes away, like every other flu that’s ever hit a flu season!!

That’s what my strange virus did over time, like any other sickness I’ve ever felt.  It went away… It was a hard struggle, horrible headaches, fever, aches, losing pizazz and my passion for my life, not being able to write more than a couple paragraphs in three weeks!  Bummers galore!  I even cursed out God, I have to admit, more than once!  Mostly because in the middle of my sickness the locals where I live in Mexico set off fireworks a stone’s throw from my house, the week of Saint Joseph, littering our peace with bombs.  Went right to my temple, throbbing, shooting to go with the chest pain and twitches I always get around those stupid things.

Then the mosquitoes came… Just when I’m getting some sleep to bash that virus out, the buzz at my ear, and I’d have to hunt down the buggers for an hour!  Calamity!  Injustice!  Why’d you make this horrible stuff, God!?!?  I was ticked.  And sick… Near suicidal, flashing thoughts of self-harm… But… little by little… I apologized to God, that saint’s week of dumb fireworks passed, the mosquitoes gave me a break.

In 12-Step groups, I used to hear the expression, “God never gives us more than we can handle.”  I think there’s something there.  I was brought to the brink, but I had enough faith, positive thinking through my Christian Science training, and patience to gut it out and win.

***

We are all different, and my way of achieving health might be different than yours… My definition of health is a peace of mind I get by doing what I feel is God’s will for me, one day at a time.  Very “AA” of me, but in my life, I find it all goes better when the spiritual leads the emotional and physical.  Spirit, spirit, spirit!  It’s powerful stuff, that and faith, and I’ll declare now proudly that if I had one type of healthcare to name it would be Christian Science, a religion founded by Mary Baker Eddy which applied the bible (especially its gospels) to our day to day health.  An elderly woman I drove around as a service back in the ’90’s related this religious view of health to me, and I like it.  It works for me and it has a great price tag: it’s free.

Let’s put that aside as one person’s view of health in a large country.  There are over 300 million people in usurped Native American land, hence over 300 million views, which I imagine range from totally unlike mine to slightly different.  We all have different beliefs on many topics, the U.S. Government through its First Amendment to the Constitution purporting to allow for that, explicitly in the area of religion and the press.  My version of health has a very strong, in fact dominant religious and spiritual component to it.  Am I the only one?  I sincerely doubt that, as the population of Christian Scientists alone would clearly testify, a number over a couple hundred thousand to be sure.

If health has a religious connection to more than just me, why is Government so adamant that it should be involved with it?  Let’s look at that famous Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…

The U.S. Government needs a clear definition of terms before it can be a valid legislator on “health;” perhaps one that would cross a religious line, so render it the wrong institution to in fact legislate on the topic.

I visited Otsungna (“L.A.”) in April from my home in Mexico to note that its mayor was making citizens wear masks in any public place.  This is one of many instances over the years of Government taking sides with Western medicine, calling their “experts” health itself.  A silent arrangement, but an unproven link lingers, as I know I don’t see or feel health in an over-air-conditioned, over-priced doctor’s office.  I have the Christian Science, yes, but even the Native American Great Spirit—the natural, earth-based approach to health—fills me with peace of mind more than Western offices, concrete, asphalt, pills and surgeries.  It’s okay for someone reading that to be upset and claim a different point of view!  Perhaps you get great peace of mind from Western medicine, which is fine, so wear your mask without making me wear one please.

We should all be free to decide our own health path on Turtle Island or anywhere else.  This is a hard essay to write, as I don’t actually believe in the United States as a valid government, for it was founded on armed theft and violence against the native people here.  In fact, at no time has the United States Government received consent of the native peoples to govern here that was not forced at gunpoint—and by John Locke’s definition of true government, validating itself by the “consent of the governed…” we have a failure.  That being said, one has to live by even invalid constructs, and in the case of the U.S. there is a law that’s supposed to give us free speech, and it also claims so proudly to be a democracy.

But during a virus panic, the Government feels it has an excuse to squash free speech, mandate quarantines and masks—lending to the problem in logic I have with such a response.  If one is living a healthy life, making positive choices and walking a path with conviction and belief—why would that person change such a path because of an over-hyped virus?  The U.S. and other governments aligned with Western medicine ask and demand that we be afraid of people, keep distances.  This is against Christian practice, asks that I believe the lie that my brother or sister human being out on the road is more likely to curse me than bless me. I’ll never believe that, nor will I ever believe in a government that doesn’t allow me to believe what I want to believe.

“But what about all the death?”  With true faith in a power greater than ourselves and viruses, there is no death.  Build the spirit well and live forever!

Amen