Category: Michael D
America, home of . . .
Is America showing its age? It is hard to imagine that 244 years old is the edge of early adolescence when compared to other Nations of the world. You can hear England quip, “I’ve got shoes older than you.” Distant relatives in the EU Nation states collectively shake their head and giggle in admiration and disappointment at the state of our Union in these United States of America. Those “older” Nations, like a parent might note to adult children with their first child, “Having a little trouble are you?”
King George’s character in Hamilton sings,
“Da da da da da
Da da da da daye da
Da da da da daye da
You’re on your own…”
I reflected on America this July 4th weekend. The oddity, freedom, chaos, and uncertainty of a coronavirus holiday. I’m preparing for many more like it. Several sources informed my reflection. My apologies Chancellor Tucker who, speaking at my graduation from TCU, reminded us that we were educated to know how to ask quality questions of diverse sources. I am not as intentionally diverse as one could be, ought to be, in this time of open access and information overload. Everyone has a perspective. I have trusted media organizations reporting on the “news” of the day as if several alternative universes existed. The American melting pot narrative has yielded a spicy Mulligan stew where there is no general agreement on the ingredients of the roux or liquid to create the base.
A required “gap” experience of two years of civil service for all high school graduates may be the only liquid capable of reviving and renewing an appreciation for our neighbor’s experience and desire for the “American dream.” Is this dream more than a chicken in every pot, a job, high speed Internet, a car, and line of credit?
- Life
- Liberty
- Pursuit of happiness
- Profit at all cost
- Equal opportunity under the law
- Freedom from religion or freedom of religion
- Equal access to the systems of decision making
- Equal access to the systems of power, finance, and government
Make your own list. What are five or six tangible characteristics or aspects of the American dream you desire for your neighbor and yourself?
My reading and watching left me wondering what America is known for then and now. America, home of . . .
HBO, “The Newsroom,” 2012. Season 1 Episode 1
At the core of the musical (Hamilton) is the founding — reimagined, re-mythologized, rough-edged. A mess of contradictions, like this nation on its 244th birthday.
Let’s Finish the American Revolution
Timothy Egan, NYTimes.com Opinion, July 3, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/opinion/fourth-of-july.html?smid=em-share
A great debate about who should remain on which pedestals can be a healthy one. The right’s idea that we must preserve the worst figures to protect the best is idiotic. The left’s idea that we should bring down the best because we know who they were at their worst is no less so. An intelligent society should be able to make intelligent distinctions, starting with the one between those who made our union more perfect and those who made it less.
After the Statues Fall
Bret Stephens, NYTimes.com Opinion, June 26, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opinion/statues-protests.html?smid=em-share
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Maya Angelou, On The Pulse Of Morning. Delivered January 20, 1993 at the Inauguration of President Clinton.
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
You know, it’s almost like what happened to me with COVID. I was asymptomatic, right? I wasn’t expressing, I wasn’t actively doing anything. But that didn’t mean that I wasn’t a danger to other people … I think it can be like that with race and bias and white supremacy, too. You don’t have to actively be a part of it or be actively displaying signs of it. But that doesn’t mean that in your wake, damage and pain and terrible things aren’t happening … you could be asymptomatic in biases and supremacy and racism, too.
D. L. Hughley: ‘Everybody Knows’ Independence Day Didn’t Free Us All. NPR Weekend Edition Saturday, July 4, 2020
For some serious, in your face and under your skin course language comedy truth, Google, “George Carlin American Pride.” Also, watch his speech at the National Press Club for some thoughts on language. I am not placing the videos here knowing that his language will offend.
And, like many around the world my companion and I watched “Hamilton” this weekend.
History has its eye on you and on us. All of us in these United States of America.
Clean Up to Do
“ashes and diamonds
foe and friend
we were all equal in the end.”
(Pink Floyd, The Final Cut, “Two Suns in the Sunset.” 1983.)
While it is true that we all pass from this life into the next equally silent and we come into this life equally crying, that is where the idealized equality of persons created in God’s image begins and ends. Try as we do to distract ourselves from this truth, we are reminded of it in plain sight, again, and again. No matter how much TV we binge, Youtube you surf, video games played, or prayers you offer in confession or intercession, this will not just go away nor be solved with ease. People of goodwill of all races and economic backgrounds will have to decide to change the systems that enable racism and other “isms” that create injustice. And even then, better as it will become there will still be work to do. Like the Dragon capsule docking with the International Space Station on Saturday, our personal lives and communal lives are a constant work of repositioning, sometimes in large bursts of energy and sometimes small bursts, to align the trajectory of your life with the source of your being. Tethered to that source, even when you don’t know you are being carried, can help when you are adrift in life. At some point, we all become adrift during the journey of life and journey in faith. What’s your source?
The ideals, core values, and principles of our faith statements and our Nation are just that: ideals, values, and principles. The systems built from those, like some infrastructure around the Nation and the globe, are failing the rainbow of humanity who are all precious in God’s sight. It is not a new problem. It is exasperated by the speed of information and images. The open firehose of images and information oxidizes our ability to filter information from entertainment or protest from people who just like to cause problems and watch the world burn.
A couple of years ago we began, ever so gently, intentionally thinking about and talking about reconciliation between human beings at summer camp. Junior High and High School youth alongside adult volunteers struggled and I know some did not return to camp because it was perceived as becoming political. I understand. My toes and my feelings were hurt a bit too, but that is where Jesus meets us. The First Testament prophets told hard truths about their context. The parables that Jesus told are not warm fuzzies though we’ve worked to make them more appetizing. Mirrors show us who we are at any given moment. They reflect you to you, and the US to us, more clearly than a stylized Instagram or Snapchat selfie. “It is unimaginably hard to do this–to live consciously, adultly, day in and day out.”(1)
Near the end of the film, “Bruce Almighty,” the city of Buffalo is rioting as Bruce has filled in for God. Bruce and God are mopping a floor. As they finish, God remarks, “It’s a wonderful thing. No matter how filthy something gets you can always clean it right up.” We’ve got some clean up to do and two lyrics point a direction. “Let it begin with me.”(2) In our private and public work, “we shall overcome someday.”(3)
Notes
1) David Foster Wallace, This is Water: Some Thoughts Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life. Little, Brown and Company (New York) 2009.
2) Jill Jackson and Sy Miller, “Let There Be Peace On Earth.” 1955.
3) Based on a song structure of “I Will Overcome” by Charles Albert Tindley and first published in 1900. “We Shall Overcome” published in an edition of the People’s Songs Bulletin 1947, and said to have been sung by tobacco workers led by Lucille Simmons during a 1945 cigar workers strike in Charleston, South Carolina. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Shall_Overcome).