God Bless America

We live in a world where rather meaty terms are dropped about willy-nilly. The cynics and the skeptics have it easy, perhaps too easy.

Ambrose Bierce defines patriotism - "Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first."

Some would have us believe the state of the world including the gulf oil disaster and war in Afghanistan is all our fault, a necessary consequence of the fall of Adam (but of course "she" made me do it"). Others by way of tortured sophistry, insist we are captive in this cave of mortal existence and will be liberated on death. Still other cling to a belief that by repeating the same tired utterances our fannies will be be rescued from this fire and not cast into the next.

But with no little courage, some will grudgingly concede God to be at least the source of the world as we sense it to be (and as faulty as they might be). The crisp morning air, the sound of rushing water, the delight of the morning's first cup of coffee, the kiss of a loved one, the glee of a child. Blessings are there to be found even at the convenience store where every evidence of "BP" has been removed.  Perhaps it is easier to buy ones caffeine and petrol at an anonymous place than one supplied by Hugo Chavez or some unnamed middle-Eastern potentate down the street.

Lacking courage, we can maintain our mis-perceptions and wait for the parade later today and the fireworks tonight. Or maybe slip into a church, sing a few patriotic hymns, and less cynically give thanks for what we have. If we are truly blessed, we may have an inkling of what Matthew Fox calls our "Original Blessing" and touch what Byron Katie describes as "Loving what is".

Certainly America is more than the land our forefathers stole from the Native Americans, cultivated by the hands of slaves, industry pursued through the exploitation of cheap labor (including our neighbors to the South), vast natural resources found anywhere on the planet and a banking system which invents methods the law has never dreamt of.

Maybe John Greenleaf Whittier was closer than Irving Berlin.

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.

God Bless America!