When I was growing up in Wheat Ridge, the nice people gained strength from social alliances they formed in churches.
Their strength came from people and institutions in the community.
But we white trash were excluded from that world.
We had to gain strength from abstract sources and that made us all the more odd to people like the police and wealthy church goers who saw us as superstitious more than spiritual.
The most abstract source of strength is, of course, Love. And the greatest teacher of Love is Jesus. And all us oppressed people love Jesus because he makes us feel valued in the eyes of God.
One day a nice church lady sentenced me to H-E-double toothpicks: "Sean," she said, "if you don't stop drawing cartoons, you'll spend eternal life in fire."
I countered her spiritual bully tactic with a quote from Jesus.
"Judge not that ye--"
But before I could finish, she walked away.
The last thing any good Christian in Wheat Ridge wants to hear is anything Jesus had to say.
Nestled between the liberally conservative city of Denver and the conservatively liberal town of Boulder is the conservatively conservative community of Wheat Ridge, the Chickenhawk capital of Colorado.
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