Most days, when I'm not wearing some other neck-based accessory like a tie, I like to wear a small, upside-down cross on a chord around my neck. It's made of pewter, and bears a simple, elegant design on its face. I bought it from a small independent jeweler in Florida, and it has become one of my most cherished possessions, despite its humble appearance and low monetary value.

As you might imagine, wearing an upside-down cross has led to a pretty wide range of reactions from the strangers that I have interacted with while doing so. Many do not know the symbol's meaning, and have become offended or even upset when they see the humble pewter hanging there, thinking that I am being somehow disrespectful to the Christian faith (though when I had the chance to meet archbishop Desmond Tutu a few years back, he knew what it was right away). 

In Christian legend, Saint Peter was visiting the faithful in the city of Rome during the reign of Emperor Nero. He was in the city during the Great Fire of Rome, which burned for six days and caused massive devastation and damages. The fire was blamed on the Christians and used as an excuse to begin the first large-scale persecution of Christians by the imperial Roman government. As a result, Peter fled the city, fearing his imminent execution.

As Peter was on the road, the story goes, he saw a vision of Jesus carrying a cross and walking back toward the city. Peter asked him, "Quo Vadis?", Latin for "Where are you going?" The Lord replied to him, "I am going to Rome to be crucified again," which gave Peter the courage he needed to go back, comfort his brothers and sisters in captivity, and face his own martyrdom. He was, as one could expect, captured and sentenced to by crucified, whereupon he made a remark that to die in the same manner as Christ was an honor of which he was not worthy, and so the Romans chose instead to crucify him upside down.

 Now of course, invariably when I'm sharing this story with others, I let them in on a little private joke I have, which is I think Saint Peter was secretly a genius. I mean, if you're crucified upside down, all the blood will rush to your head and you'll pass out before the worst of the agony! If you're going to be crucified, that's probably the way to do it ;)

But jokes about brutal executions aside, I have always consciously worn this symbol for an educational purpose. I seek, little by little, to reclaim the symbol, and by sharing Peter's story with others I'm feel as though I am fighting ignorance and keep the tradition alive. It is of little surprise to me that in this new age, when the core tenets and true theology of Christ are so poorly understood, many angry and foolish people have taken to displaying the upside-down cross in an attempt to mock the church, or display their anti-religious sentiment. All I can do is chuckle to myself, as I know that they are instead spreading an ancient Christian symbol, and keeping the example of Saint Peter alive for me. This is generally what I would call the "real" answer to the question, "why is your cross upside-down?"

But lately, I've realized that there's more truth in my little tension-breaking joke than I might have thought. When I look down, it's right-side up. I picked the cross of St. Peter because in many ways I've always empathized with the man. Peter is just a tad bit headstrong,  arrogant, and full of himself. He tends to think that he has it all figured out, just before the Lord shows him that he's not quite there. His heart is in the right place, and he's earnest in his desire to do the right thing, but he just doesn't always know how.

Saint Peter's cross acts as a reminder to me to be a little more humble when I think I have it all figured out. When I try to look down on someone for thinking differently than I do, there's the cross staring back at me. If I try to look down on someone less fortunate than I am, there's the cross staring back at me. If I try to look down on someone because I think I'm better than they are, there's the cross staring back at me. When I look down, it's right-side up, and I am very grateful for that.

​Almighty Father, who inspired Simon Peter, first among the apostles, to confess Jesus as Messiah and Son of the living God: Keep your Church steadfast upon the rock of this faith, so that in unity and peace we may proclaim the one truth and follow the one Lord, our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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A few weeks ago there was a thread on /r/christianity that asked its readers whether they felt that they had ever been visited by an angel without knowing it. There have certainly been a number of times in my life where I have felt, at the very least, that I had met the exact right person at the exact right time, but none more so than a young man that I met one night almost 15 years ago.

I've only recently started telling this story to anyone, and even many of you who are close to me may not know this, but one night, back when I was 12, a friend and I were beaten up for being white. We were walking back to his house after visiting a mutual friend, and it had started to get dark. As we walked along, we saw a small group of black teenagers having a conversation on the sidewalk. We didn't really think anything of it, and kept on walking and talking to each other. As we got close, the group decided to move and block our path. They started laughing at us, calling us names, and refused to move aside and allow us to pass. We attempted to cross the street and find another way to get where we were going, but the group decided to follow us, and when they saw that there were no other people around they attacked us, beat us, and called us all manner of racial slurs as we attempted to flee. I was bigger than my friend, and tried to take the brunt of the blows myself, but they made sure to spread them out between the two of us. Eventually we made it to a brighter area with a major street, and they finally relented and ran off. It was an incredibly harrowing experience, and one that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

To my surprise - and incredible fortune - we actually made it through the incident fairly unscathed. My parents took me to the hospital, but I turned out to just have a bruise or two; nothing too serious. Looking back on it, I don't think they really wanted to hurt us, or had anything against us personally. I've made it through my adolescence now, and I understand how turbulent those feelings can be, and can only imagine how it must feel to be a black adolescent in America, and experience the habitual and institutional racism that they do. They were angry, we were there, and we symbolized everything they were angry about.

Far more worrying than any physical harm they may have done was the potential psychological harm. Remember, I was just 12 years old, and I was scared. I was worried that it might happen again; that another black person might attack me for the color of my skin.

Not more than two weeks later I was walking alone along the edge of a park in my own neighborhood, and again it had started to get dark. Up ahead I saw a lone black teenager walking toward me on the sidewalk. He appeared, I think it is fair to say, to be the culmination of every stereotype there is: he was wearing baggy clothing, a large black jacket, nice well-kept sneakers, and a beanie, and he walked with a bit of a swagger. I'm fairly sure he even had a few gold chains around his neck (though my mind may be exaggerating the story just a little bit).

Just an aside, to be ultra fair, I was a walking stereotype myself, ha ha! As you imagine him, I want you to also imagine me as the epitome of the chubby white nerd.

Anyway I saw him walking toward me, and I felt myself tense up. I started thinking about perhaps turning around, or crossing to the other side of the street. I was worried about what might happen. I was afraid of him. I could have done any of those things, but in that moment I told myself that everything would be fine, and I kept walking, my heart pounding in my chest.

Just before we passed each other, I watched this young man stick his hand out, palm up, facing me. We made eye contact, and he just sort of looked at me expectantly, without saying a word. I realized what was going on, and stuck my hand out just in time. He took my hand, gave me a brief but firm handshake, nodded at me, and went on his way.

In that moment, all of my fear and anxiety just melted away. I understood, fully, that what had happened to me had been the action of a few individuals; that it was not reflective of the whole. I cannot possibly tell you how grateful I am to that stranger.

It's easy to see how the first incident might easily have turned me into a racist. I could have allowed it to confirm the stereotypes that I had been fed by TV news, and withdrawn myself in fear of people who were different from me. If I hadn't already been fortunate enough to have parents that raised me to respect and honor human diversity, I may well have been lost before that man even came along. Instead, here I am, an advocate for love, equity, and the dignity for all people. If I have entertained angels without knowing it, certainly that man was one of them.

Not long ago I got into a little argument with a relative of mine about the Affordable Care Act. I had recently completed my healthcare marketplace application for 2017, and was pleased that I had found a good plan that I could afford, and thanks to deductible cost-sharing I won't have to worry about just having bankruptcy insurance and can actually receive care if I get sick. My relative made a comment to me about how everyone else will keep working harder to pay more taxes so that I can get covered, and implied rather heavily that I was a leach attached to the underbelly of people who were working harder than I am.

Setting aside the assumption that people are poor because they don't work very hard - or wealthy because they work harder than other people - there clearly still seems to be a great deal of confusion around the healthcare debate that stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of economics and labor. Not only should wealthy conservatives want to pay for the deductible cost sharing of the Affordable Care Act, but they should want to go one step further and institute a single-payer universal health care program, and pay for that too.

To be clear, I am, as it were, a bleeding-heart liberal. I want to extend health care coverage to all people because I think it's the right thing to do, and as a confirmed Christian I swore to respect the dignity of every human being. My reasons are entirely moral and emotional, but I'll tell you a secret: the first modern, universal healthcare system wasn't started by filthy, bleeding-heart, grassroots liberals who were doing it for moral and emotional reasons. It was started by wealthy, conservative British politicians who did it for economic reasons and national security.

During and immediately following the devastation of the second world war Great Britain found itself facing a home-brewed crisis that nobody had really anticipated. Successfully executing the war required an unprecedented expenditure of manpower; an estimated 3.5 million British men served in the British army during the war, not to mention millions more who were required at home to work in factories to create arms and munitions. When British command turned to the working classes to recruit new soldiers, however, they found a population that was in shambles. Because they could not afford the services of a physician, many poor and working-class men were malnourished, or suffered from chronic ailments that had gone untreated, or perhaps even had suffered an injury, like a broken bone, that had not healed properly and left them lame.

As the West turned from World War 2 into a Cold War with the Soviet Union almost on the day the armistice was signed, these manpower issues presented a clear and present threat to Great Britain's immediate future. It was a distinct possibility that they would resume large-scale engagements very soon, and needed a way to make sure that there was a healthy, productive labor force from which to draw recruits. It was almost explicitly for this reason that Parliament formed the National Health Service to make sure that everyone had access to medical services.

The new NHS was a massive success. Life expectancy rose dramatically, productivity increased, and - especially important to those concerned with strong, healthy boys being born - infant mortality and childbirth fatalities dropped considerably as women received access to better natal care. It was so successful that other industrialized nations quickly followed suit.

​Universal healthcare is fantastic for the economy. Healthy people are happier and more productive, because they are more physically fit and well. They can work longer hours and take entrepreneurial financial risks - like opening a business - because they don't have to worry about what might happen if they get sick. This increase in happiness and productivity strengthens the workforce, and also helps create greater societal stability and cohesion.

​For those who don't quite believe me that access to healthcare can drastically increase productivity, consider yours truly as a case study. Prior to the Affordable Care Act it was incredibly difficult for me to receive anything more than the most basic medical care with the intent of treating ongoing problems or underlying issues. Even when I was covered, deductibles were so high that I couldn't pay for tests or specialist visits.

​I suffer - at the time, unknowingly - from a condition called eustachian tube dysfunction; the tubes that drain my ears into my sinuses are abnormally narrow and constricted. Left untreated, eustachian tube dysfunction causes fluid to back up in the ears instead of draining properly, making ear infections much more likely and even causing hearing loss. For many, including myself, it's a condition that is easily treated with some fairly innocuous and inexpensive nasal sprays, but before the ACA I couldn't afford the specialist visits and diagnostic tests required to tell me that I even had it. For years I suffered awful infections every time I got sick, and watched - or perhaps, listened - as my hearing slowly deteriorated for reasons I couldn't fathom.

Many of my friends, acquaintances, and even family still don't realize how bad this had gotten. By the time I was 22 I really couldn't hear people who were speaking softly to me. I became exceptionally adept at reading people's faces to see what emotion their words should be causing, and responding appropriately. I've had more than my share of awkward moments where someone whispered a question to me, and I stared at them without answering, trying to get a feel for what my response should be.

Imagine how much this minor and very treatable condition affected my productivity. If I fell ill it took me more time to recover, which means potential lost work time, and when I was working, or sitting in class and trying to hear a quiet instructor, I would miss key pieces of information, sometimes angering customers and the like. Cost sharing from the ACA, and my father's insurance program being forced to provide an HRA stipend to policy holders, allowed me to go and see an ear, nose, and throat specialist and afford a CT scan of my sinuses to diagnose the problem, determine its severity, and establish a course of treatment. Now I just have a prescription nasal spray that costs me about $5 a month, and I can hear people again, and have not had an ear infection in 3 years.

Not enough? Consider this: when I was 18, just a few days after graduating from high school, I suffered an injury - on my own time - that completely separated the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in my left knee from the bone. The ACL is vital to side-to-side motion in the knee, and the damage could only be repaired through surgery. At the time I was somewhat covered by reasonable insurance, being a kid and all, and able to have the ACL repaired. There were still some hefty out-of-pocket costs that put a financial strain on me and my family, but I am incredibly lucky to have been able to have the surgery.

A few years down the line, though, I suffered some late complications that came on very suddenly. I went from getting around normally to being on crutches again over the course of a couple days. The insurance company we had then covered a couple of physical therapy visits, and I managed to get down to using just a cane, but they wouldn't cover any more, and the next year the policy changed and they wouldn't cover any at all. I was stuck on a cane for several years.

Imagine the affect of that on my productivity. Any job that required physical exertion of any kind was more or less out of the question. Any job that required an employee to stand for a shift was out from the get go; I couldn't stand for more than an hour, if I was lucky, before my knee gave out under me. After the passage of the ACA, however, my now pre-existing condition was covered by new insurance. I was able to see a PT who did wonders for me, got me off the cane, reduced my pain to nearly 0, and allowed me to do physical tasks again. The return on investment from the care I've received has already been astounding, and isn't over yet as it can be logically extended into my entire working life.

​To put the final nail in the coffin for the argument against single-payer system, not only does universal healthcare vastly improve health outcomes, raise life expectancy, reduce infant and maternal mortality, make people happier, raise productivity, and provide for national defense, but it does it all at a way lower cost then we're already paying for our ridiculous private program! Look at any comparative analysis of healthcare costs among industrialized countries and one quickly finds that not only do countries with universal healthcare systems pay less than we do, but that the US already has public expenditures on healthcare that are as high as some of those countries pay overall, due to our reliance on emergency rooms, smaller payment pools, administrative costs of the for-profit companies running things, and numerous other factors.

Higher productivity, a stronger economy, national defense, AND lower costs? Why, these are all things conservatives love! And staunch fiscal conservatives from nations all over the world will be quick to praise their universal healthcare systems, and consider them essential. It is long past time to change our thinking on healthcare. Wealthy conservatives who are concerned with the strength of the economy, you should absolutely want to pay for poor people's healthcare. It's not just better for them; it's better for everyone. 

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