Incarnationally Speaking… July 6th Edition
Some of you probably remember the bicentennial.
I was 10 years old. My Mom has this great picture of me
pulling a float I designed and constructed for my neighborhood’s parade. I made
a chicken wire and crepe-paper birthday cake and my dad constructed a rolling
platform for it. On the 4th, the kids and adults in my neighborhood
congregated on a cul-de-sac and we had a parade from one end of High Harbor
Lane to the neighborhood pool and tennis courts.
I got Mom to make me a pair of breeches out of some old
pants by cutting them off below the knee. I got a pair of white, knee-high
socks and tucked the pants in them. I borrowed a button-on ruffle from my
brother’s hot handbell-choir tuxedo, co-opted a vest from one of my plaid Sears
wash-n-wear suits, stapled the sides and back of a felt cowboy hat I won at a
county fair into a tricorner and, by golly, I made a convincing Johnny Tremain.
I was an exuberant patriot at 10 years old, because I rang a bell as I paraded,
yelling, “Happy Birthday, America!”
I am, as I was back then, grateful for the USA.
I love this place and the opportunity, safety and abundance it has afforded all of us. Who can complain? Even on our worst days in the USA, the poorest among us is safer and healthier than many people with money in developing nations. At the very least, we live reasonably sure that we are not going to be blown up by an IED or hunted down by a drone. The great majority of us have access to clean water and sanitation and our stores feature an uninterrupted supply of readily available (if often unaffordable) food and goods. Life is easy, safe and (on some days) fairly pleasurable in Good Old America.
I love this place and the opportunity, safety and abundance it has afforded all of us. Who can complain? Even on our worst days in the USA, the poorest among us is safer and healthier than many people with money in developing nations. At the very least, we live reasonably sure that we are not going to be blown up by an IED or hunted down by a drone. The great majority of us have access to clean water and sanitation and our stores feature an uninterrupted supply of readily available (if often unaffordable) food and goods. Life is easy, safe and (on some days) fairly pleasurable in Good Old America.
Not only that, but in spite of the nasty rhetoric we read
from the right and the left making “the other guy” out to be the next great
Satan, we have a competent political system that enables a peaceful (if not
often controversial) transfer of power. We do not have dicators who cling to
power through violence and we don’t usually take up arms and murder folks who
disagree with us.
So, I am most thankful for the many blessings we have here
in the USA, many of which I am probably forgetting.
However, I am also praying for this country as well.
I don’t want to tip my hand for this week’s sermon, but I am praying
that we are less independent, and
more interdependent as a nation.
As Annie Lamotte once said, God, unfortunately, does not
have the same taste in people as we do. So, that means that all the
folks out there who give me a pain in my neck: lunatics on the fringes of
political issues, that hatemongers, Ayn Rand libertarians, Fundamentalist “Christianists, “
anti-abortion crusaders, ultra-righties and the ultra-lefties, break-away Anglicans and lovers of top-40 radio- all of you- (and I mean all of you) are
Children of God and precious in her sight. Perhaps my greatest sin (and I am
sure I am not alone in this) is that I frequently forget this as I get my daily
dose of “truthiness” from various news sources. I am interdependent upon (and
with) all of you in one way or another.
I pray, as our country enters a new year of existence, that
we begin to remember our interdependence. With God’s help, may all of us, as
our prayers say, “be one.”
Father Tim
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