2018.07.08 The Real American Dream. Do Not Let It Die.

Most people think the “American dream” is that every American family will own their own home equipped with picket fence and other trimmings. Proprietorship is our dream and our downfall. Private property is our desire. Mine. Mine. Mine.

No, the American vision is far more extraordinary and far less selfish than a selfie. In a moving essay, “Mr. Lincoln,” published in a 2018 commemorative collection, Sweet Dreams, Story Catcher, the late Brian Doyle boldly proclaims: “He (Lincoln) gave his life for the extraordinary American idea. Do not let that idea die.”  
 
 That’s my prayer every day now. On July 4 it was my firecracker.

When I was in seventh grade a teacher asked us to identify someone we thought was the greatest human who ever lived—our hero. I immediately wrote Abraham Lincoln and felt quite sure of myself. I was thinking about ending slavery, winning a war for our side. Soon I was stricken with guilt because I had not identified Jesus as the greatest man. My guilt doubled when I realized that I’d never even thought of a woman—an unimaginable idea back in 1950. If I’d known enough I would have nominated Eleanor Roosevelt (below) even though my parents detested FDR.

Now I wonder: was I so wrong in seventh grade?  Lincoln, yes, had something to do with the Civil War, a war he grieved every day of his life, but his vision went far beyond my narrow idea. Lincoln, like Jesus and Eleanor, had a gospel, a vision of Union—American oneness. Beloved fools such as these often die for their ideas. Christ’s was not restricted to one country, or just to humanity, or even to one religion, but I wasn’t so far off when at twelve I nominated Abraham Lincoln—that we all may be one. Jesus (an artist's portrait below, left) was remembered for drumming this home—over and over. And Brian Doyle, a Jesus look-alike (below right) kept the vision going.

Doyle wrote of Lincoln:   “. . . he could not stand the idea of Americans not walking hand in hand toward the extraordinary country we could be, a country unlike any other that ever was, a country where all citizens are free to speak their hearts, and gather as they like, and worship whatever shape of holiness they perceive or imagine, and offer their love to whom they like. He would not allow his beloved country to fly apart because of greed and lies, and for that he was murdered by a man whose greatest wish was to tear America in half.”

Lincoln was a complicated man and had many quirks to say the least. A friend who knew him well once wrote of Lincoln: "He was the only man I ever knew the foundation of whose spirit was love." That’s crazy; that’s only for God, right?  Or is it?

“It is a foul and evil lie of the mind and the heart and the mouth and the soul to account someone less because of his or her color or religion or gender or preference in lovers. That is a squirming lie, no matter how often, and at what volume, it is repeated and God willing it will be quelled and squelched and forgotten in the years to come. It will be squelched not by laws and regulations, not by political or religious or judicial powers, but by shivers of dawning light in the hearts of men and women and children in this country who begin to dimly understand that Abraham Lincoln was the greatest of Americans not because he won a war, not because he gave his blood and his life for justice and freedom, but because the foundation of his spirit was love and he acted that way.”

Lincoln was devout but practiced no one religion. His speeches were concise and brought people to silence. His ideas and parabolic stories, without a lot of advice or legislative patter, riveted the attention of his colleagues and branded the American soul forever. To our peril we let this dream die. This isn’t about Mr. Trump or any party or governance, it is about WE the people standing for the freedom for which we stand. 

Doyle writes, dare I say prays, it best: “ . . . that we will, by the grace of the profligate gifts granted us as Americans, stand for and speak for and defend and protect freedom anywhere and everywhere it is savaged; that we will continue to, as we have for centuries, open our golden door for the tired and the poor, the huddled masses, the wretched of the world, and here let them breath free; and that difference in color and gender and religion and preference in love matter not at all when it comes to treating each other with respect and reverence. Those who fan and foment differences murder the revolutionary American idea, and ought to cower and gibber in shame in the vast shadow cast by Mr. Abraham Lincoln, Republican of Kentucky, who gave his life for that idea.”

I guess I wasn’t too far off in seventh grade. Do not let this idea die. Do not.

2012.07.29 Dream On?

I dreamed a lot as a kid, day and night, always about things I wanted to do or be or accomplish. I was lucky enough to have enough happiness, enough creativity and imagination, and enough intelligence to dream—and read many books.

After the fairy princess/ballerina/moviestar phase,  I settled into the dream of having children and being a mother. The children made my dreams. Then I discovered no one paid for motherhood or gave it much recognition, so I thought it would be better to be a man. That one didn't last long, but I did invade the sanctuary of an all-male profession, priesthood, and discovered it wasn't that much fun to be a parish "Father"—too lonely.

Every dream I've had I've worked hard to help along, revise and tweak, and get help with.

We all dream dreams. It's what keeps us alive and vital. Even on my death bed I bet I'll be conjuring heaven and dream of meeting God and Jesus.


America was founded on a dream: liberty and justice and land, land, land. It was once bright and shiny and inviting— available to all citizens. Now it has turned to pablum spooned out by the unawares, the power-hungry, the ignorant, and the too-busy-scraping-basic-livelihood-together-to-notice.

Liberty has turned into license and arbitrary violence. Justice is an illusion because there is no peace on our streets. And land has morphed into private property that includes trophy homes and gated communities where we get isolated and insulated and mistake it for individual freedom. 

The Occupy Movement of 2011 raised awareness about classism and increasing economic inequity, which means less mobility. Less is available to a greater number of citizens than ever before. 99% of us is falling fast out of the amenic middle class. It scares me to read about it but I am able to live comfortably enough not to really feel it.

Paul Krugman in his NY Times commentary on Jan 16, 2012, Martin Luther King day, wrote: “Mitt Romney says that we should discuss income inequality, if at all, only in “quiet rooms. There was a time when people said the same thing about racial inequality. [They said it about gender inequality, too, and still are.] Luckily, however, there were people like Martin Luther King who refused to stay quiet. And we should follow their example today. For the fact is that rising inequality threatens to make America a different and worse place — and we need to reverse that trend to preserve both our values and our dreams.”

Has our so-called dream become a lie?

Maybe we need to focus less on owning homes and more on being at home together.

Loneliness is a first sign of the waning of a dream.  Are Americans lonely? 

I'm lucky not to feel loneliness much, in part because I'm an introvert, and in part because I have a spouse I like. We convene the day and the evening together.  And my dream of getting a memoir published, though dim, isn't extinguished. 

Also I have a church community, a bunch of people who come together weekly to pray, sing, learn, and gather around a table to eat blessed food, after which they gratefully move to another no less sacred space to drink coffee or lemonade and eat "tapas."

The Christian church has a dream, of a God whose spaciousness knows no bounds. We learned it from Jesus. We try to practice the vision, yet sometimes we are too isolated in our own ways and community that, just like the nation, we forget to dream beyond ourselves. To complicate matters the church has gotten allergic to much if any mention of sin, awareness of the dreams of others. 

Israel, like America, had, still has, a dream. Call it a home of your own.  It's less about ownership than it is about identity, meaning, self-governance, and healing a long history of displacement, persecution, execution, and being scapegoats. I asked a young rabbi once why Jews kept getting blamed, almost no matter what happens.   “It’s because we’re exclusive, think we’re special,” he said.  Well, my God, listen to the braying of some Christians!  And some Americans!

But once Jews got their homeland in 1948 their homeland security politics have run wildly beyond security.  Palestinian land has been seized; refugee camps are established with curfews and locked gates; moving from place to place requires going through checkpoints, some of them now “flying” (you don’t know where they will pop up); mountaintop surveillance station feeling like”big daddy;” Palestinians who dream of a return to their land,  elected a terrorist regime Hamas: and worst of all a Wall of Separation, the amen to mutual loneliness. I saw it and wept.

I asked a local politician, a liberal one, about U.S. Israel/Palestine policy. I received a firm reiteration of our alliance to Israel and a justification of military power tactics as "maintaining a qualitative military edge."

Are we as appallingly ignorant of the spaciousness of our own dreams as we are of Israel/Palestine's?

The feeling of threat, whether real or imagined, kills the soul and with it the land.  Sin is as organic as love; it multiplies.

Israelis are, once again and understandably, afraid. So are Americans. So are Palestinians. So am I. I pray daily that God, who created land and leased it to humanity as blessing, will transform the hearts and minds of leaders and people ( it doesn’t matter which comes first)  from fear to humility.
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Either dreams are not a good idea at all, except in sleep, or we need help to listen to and respect the dreams of our neighbors, far and near. 

Our Jewish next-door neighbor, the one who is a beautiful singer and who has never been to Israel,  came over to sing a Christian liturgical chant she’d prepared for us as a send off on our Israel pilgrimage.

Yes!  Dream on. 

2012.01.18 American Dream?

The American dream of liberty and justice and all good things available to all citizens has turned to pablum, spooned out to the unawares, and the ignorant, and the too-busy-scraping-basic-livelihood-together-to-notice.

The so-called dream has become a lie.

There is less available than ever before to a greater number of citizens than ever before.

Paul Krugman in his NT Times commentary on Jan 16, Martin Luther King day, wrote: “Mitt Romney says that we should discuss income inequality, if at all, only in 'quiet rooms.' There was a time when people said the same thing about racial inequality. [They said it about women, too, and still are.] Luckily, however, there were people like Martin Luther King who refused to stay quiet. And we should follow their example today. For the fact is that rising inequality threatens to make America a different and worse place — and we need to reverse that trend to preserve both our values and our dreams.”

James Forbes, retired minister of the Riverside Church in NYC, said without hesitation years ago when asked what he thought the next great sin America would have to face: CLASSISM.

Years ago too I saw a cartoon image that stayed with me. It pictured a fat cat capitalist type with a top hat and dressed in a tux. In the top of his tipped hat were a small bunch of people cheering and waving money around, while numbers of others spilled down over his belly landing on the ground below. Splat! 99% of us is falling fast.

Studies indicate that the more economic inequality a society has the less mobile it becomes. People can’t move. And stasis is death.

The Occupy Movement has called attention to the problem most recently. I pray its fervor doesn’t fade away.

What will the Church say? Not a whole lot I’m embarrassed to note. This is no time for religious people to be squeamish about the word SIN. One of the better definitions of sin is disconnection from the good in God, self and neighbor.
Our country is living, no wallowing, in SIN. And the Church is seemingly allergic to its mention.

Republican Mitt Romney calls for a retrieval of the SOUL of America. What is that?

I only know one path to get back in touch with one’s lost soul and that is to pray, turn back or repent, and ask forgiveness of God, self and neighbor BEFORE we seek ways to change—sell a few homes, for example. But this can only be done in company with other citizens of church and society. And it starts with confession.

Please let’s STOP dreaming!

2011.12.07 Anita Hill, Still Brave

It's Pearl Harbor Day, a time to remember tragedy, grieve our warlike ways, and up our efforts to prevent war!!

Also a fitting time for me to commemorate one of my heros who in her own way made a contribution to the effort to end violence and its ideologies.

In early October I heard Anita Hill speak on her new book Reimagining Equality. Stories of Gender and Race and Finding Home.

Hill as I expected her to be was eloquent speaking of how our ideas about HOME shape our experience and form our ideas of justice and equality in America.

I remember being riveted to the TV in 1991 when Hill confronted the issues of sexual harassment at the Senate hearing to confirm Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court Justice.

I’d never heard of sexual harassment but I sure had experienced it in church and society AND never thought a thing about it. I figured it was about my being an attractive women. Imagine!

Not until I read and became a feminist did I understand inequities, power dynamics and patriarchy, aptly defined by theologian Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza as any system of social organization that depends for its stability, its very existence, on -isms, strongly held beliefs and norms whereby one group has,and is supposed to have, more power and more access to resources than all others.

The inequity is structured right into the system,politically, economically, and theologically. It’s a short attitudinal hop from God HE the Almighty power to HE the man who has power over the woman. HE with all the power and right is sexISM.

Ism to me means that whatever precedes the -ism has all the power in the mind of a culture, an individual, or a group. I’m glad Christianity isn’t called Christian-ism.

Anita Hill told us that her grandmother’s name never appeared on the documentation or deed for a large farm her grandparents homesteaded in 1869. Her grandFATHER went from being property to owning property, the American dream. What happened to HER? The grandparents farmed the land together, both giving sweat and tears to the project of landed freedom. It wasn’t that her grandfather treated her grandmother with personal disrespect; the context ignored her very existence.

That’s old stuff you say. Maybe and maybe not. We’ve come a long way for sure and we’re not there yet. Hill cited the current housing crisis and foreclosure as no accident. The crisis is gendered. Women, singles in fact, have been unable to get loans and gain greater economic independence.

The two-parent single home solution isn’t working as the dream. It is failing to provide true HOME.

This is not the space to go deeper into this but Hill said the American dream of everyone being able to own property has ballooned. It has become distorted to mean that every American MUST HAVE bigger and bigger homes. "Trophy" mansions represent a failure of equity. They are symbols of a failed vision.

I’ve never like the idea of equality anyway. Human beings are not equal. They are equivalent, of equal value in our nations and in our churches.

Hill suggested that HOME means belonging, safety, community, not just house.

Many churches bear the name Heavenly Rest. Rest is a biblical metaphor for God. It doesn’t just mean peace after you die. You have a home in God as you are right now.

If we could begin to see each other this way we might rework the American dream and work to enlarge the concept of HOME as belonging in a community of equivalent souls where anything that devalues things black, female, disabled, poor, etc. undermines the whole.

According to Hill we need a movement from tolerance to belonging—very spiritual, very political, very economic, very American.