A vision for our country

You must wonder what in the world I am doing up here. Believe me, so do I. I can only guess that when Jim Theus faced up to the fact that our dear friend Carl Munday, Marine Corps general and onetime commandant, would not be with us this year, he thought, "Well, maybe the experience of the oldest one among us is justification for speaking about our wonderful country on this Fourth of July holiday ... oh my gosh! That is my mother-in-law!"

Well, I have lived in it 92 years, experienced the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War II in which my husband served as a Marine, Hiroshima and the genie in the bottle of the atom bomb, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, The Korean War, a man landing on the moon, the hippie era, Woodstock, the Vietnam war with its protests and burning of draft cards, the Civil Rights Revolution (in Mississippi, no less), the assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, Watergate, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the bombing of the Twin Towers on 9/11, and the beginning if not the end of the War on Terrorism and entry into Afghanistan and Iraq. So yes, I have seen a lot, if that is any qualification.

My grandfather fought in the Civil War on the Confederate side. He was quite a storyteller and as a child I loved hearing his stories involving heroism and atrocities on both sides. My grandfather's conclusion: War is hell. Three of our immigrant ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War.

But I don't want to speak on the Fourth of July only of events and war. I want to speak of a vision for our country, and I want to start with the vision of our founding fathers. I want to salute them and their genius for their vision in laying the foundation for this nation, which subsequent generations built on and which now devolves on us--or rather you and your children, for my generation will soon no longer be. From the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

How is that for a vision?

Then, having secured those rights in a bloody war, they set out to make that vision a reality.

My immigrant ancestors, and perhaps some of yours, came to these shores looking for land, and they did not have land grants from the British government. Where they came from, Scotland and Ireland, having land meant you had control over your own life. So they set out from the comforts of the East Coast on long and arduous journeys over these Appalachian Mountains, unbridged streams and rivers and hot-as-Hades valleys. My hat's off to those early settlers. Mine finally ended their journey in Arkansas and Louisiana. I sometimes think their worn-out wives said, "All right, enough. Here and no further." And they did find and cultivate land and prospered. Along the way they met another people who had been here long before they arrived, Native Americans. And it was often not a happy meeting. Battles were fought, lives on both sides were lost. But these people, too, had a vision. Listen to this one of Black Elk, a holy man of the Oglala Sioux, now a very old man, as he told his vision to John Neihardt, a poet and historian of the 20th Century: My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life. It is the story of all life that is holy and good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing it with the four-leggeds and the beings of the air and all green things, for these are the children of the mother, and their father is one spirit. My vision is of a holy tree that should have flourished in a peoples' heart with flowers and singing birds, but is now withered. But the vision was true and mighty yet, for such things are of the Spirit. And it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost." Does that remind you of the Genesis story of creation, where the Creator God--one spirit--created two-leggeds and four-leggeds and all living things, looked at it and said, "That is good"? He gave us everything we needed and He gave us dominion over it. All we needed to do was to love each other as He loved us, sharing in the bounty He had provided. His vision for us, his children, failed because man's vision failed. Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, Cain killed Abel, and you know the rest. "It is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost." In other words, they can no longer see the vision, and as Proverbs tells us, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." Moses had a vision and gave us the Ten Commandments, which we break with some regularity. Abraham Lincoln had a vision: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

But even though the war to preserve that vision was won, men (and women) were not created equally. I lived in the Jim Crow South. In the darkness of their eyes, the vision was lost. Then Martin Luther King had a vision: I have a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down at the table of brotherhood. Not long after that, Martin Luther King was shot and killed for his dream. And dreamers of dreams are too frequently killed, for men get lost in the darkness of their eyes and cannot see the vision, and they hate the one who has it. But others will rise up, for God knows we must have visions and people of vision. For God knows we need a fresh vision for our country now as we face chaos, war and change in the Middle East, the threat of global warming and its consequences for our beautiful planet, and deep divisions in our body politic. I sometimes wonder why God puts up with us. But He does. He is patient. He loves us, warts and all. He knows that this, our beloved country, has a vital role to play, and that we sometimes rise to greatness remembering that there are truths we hold to be self-evident.

I am comforted when I despair that we will ever get it right by a vision that one of the great medieval mystics, Dame Julian of Norwich, had when distraught by her own sins and failures and those of her country. God speaks to her and says, "Sin is behovely [necessary] but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

And I think we have to cling to that reassurance, that in God's good time, despite fears, violence, poverty and all kinds of mayhem, "All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." Even Paul, in the letter to the Romans, despairs of his ability to do the right thing as he knows it, and Jesus describes the children of his generation like sulky children complaining of each other in the marketplace. So take heart.

Let me ask you: What is your vision for our country?

I hope you have one, and put some effort into bringing it about. Your vision, combined with that of others, can become a great mosaic, a beautiful pattern, each small piece fitting into its own unique place, until a glorious picture emerges to give us hope that the vision of our forefathers and subsequent generations shall not perish from the earth.

I end with a poem that is a prayer:

God, who stretched the spangled heavens, infinite in time and place, Flung the suns in burning radiance Through the silent fields of space: We Your children in Your likeness, Share inventive powers with You. Great Creator still creating Show us what we yet may do.

We have ventured worlds undreamed of Since the childhood of our race, Known the ecstasy of winging through Untraveled realms of space; Probed the secrets of the atom Yielding unimagined power, Facing us with life's destruction Or our most triumphant hour.

As each far horizon beckons May it challenge us anew, Children of creative purpose, Serving others, honoring You. May our dreams prove rich with promise, each endeavor well begun; Great Creator, give us guidance Till our goals and Yours are one.

Just don't get lost in the darkness of your eyes.

Editorial on 07/03/2016

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