Citizens of the Heart Blog
July 02, 2025
I wish I could tell you when The Good Table Cafe will open, but snags with PG&E make it impossible to predict . . . •sigh• In the meantime, here’s a little spiritual touchstone for the holiday weekend.
The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions: Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinion? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up, trusting our fellow citizens to join us in our determined pursuit—a living democracy?
– Terry Tempest Williams
Several years ago, during our Sunday community conversation about what it means to be a citizen, Betty Coates (a former Rosie the Riveter whose memory is a blessing) told us that her mother lost her U.S. citizenship when she married her Swedish father. Further research has shown that this happened due to an ugly law known as the Expatriation Act of 1907. This act primarily dealt with the status of Americans living abroad, but section 3 dealt a blow to American women who married "aliens". It was not superseded until the 1940's. Also, it did not apply to married men, so it was also sexist, but then again women couldn't vote at the time either. Betty's mother and father later became naturalized citizens together and when the judge asked her mother where she was born and she said "San Jose", he asked her no more questions.
For those of us born in this nation, we often take the fact of our citizenship - and rights to due process and voting - for granted. Cynicism, ignorance, and despair have caused many of us - and sadly especially young people - to fail to exercise our responsibilities as citizens to be informed, participate, and vote. The general feeling of "I can't make a difference" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and this lack of engagement may ultimately destroy our democracy all together.
My own belief is that having an active and rich spiritual life makes it much easier to participate in the body politic. For when we are secure in our sense of the divine at work, it's a lot easier to put up with the muck of human machinations. And as citizens of heaven, we have hope that transcends the basest of political schemes.
I am also mindful that other parts of the great (and dysfunctional) Christian family are quite happy to limit citizenship in heaven too. And even deign to "take it away" from those they have decided are unworthy. Fortunately, God is God, and people are just people, and we can rest assured and claim the promise from Romans 8:38-39: "that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.