Our national situation is dire! Is there a solution? If so, The time i s NOW! Our present leaders grasped power on a slogan: “Make America Great Again!” It might have been an awakening and motivating challenge, but the slogan had one serious flaw: the word AGAIN. History uncovers the implied lie, for America has not reached the greatness it intended. It has never achieved the promises of its constitution, has never brought to its waking moments the beauty of its dream. Oh yes, the seed that could lead to greatness was planted; but the stem that grew birthed a bloom that never fully blossomed.
When the Founding Fathers landed on the native soil that is America and were embraced by the welcoming arms of those who had arrived before them, the embrace they returned soon became a “choke-hold”. The natives were ultimately empaled on the margins of the emerging nation. The nation would ultimately be built by the labor of slaves whose men they want only lynched, whose women they routinely raped, and whose children were sold, being passed around their holdings like merchandary livestock.
And yet, even while living this nightmare, they dreamed a nation so great that it had the potential of becoming a civic fulfillment of the final priestly prayer of Christ, Himself, “I pray Father, that they all may be ONE!” They heard His prayer and set out to offer its fulfillment as a way of life by which all nations, by embracing it, could be saved and blessed.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America; and the the Republic for which it stands; One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
But the pledge eluded them as they stole land, enslaved a whole people and marginalized newly arriving diverse national immigrant groups. Still, that pledge was the soul of their “dreamed nation’s” constitution:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights: Among these are the right to LIFE, LIBERTY, and the PURSUIT of HAPPINESS.
The Architects of this new nation truly had the formula for creating great nation, but they always fell short; and those of us who have succeeded them have come a long way in making their failed dreams an ever-evolving nightmare.
“Make America Great Again! To do this, what pattern from the past do we have in mind? What is your dream fro yesteryears? What is your nightmare today? If we really want to make America great - NOW is the time. Tomorrow is no reality. It is simply a logical construct. So I leave you with the image of THE DREAMER.
He had this way of “Tomorrowing” his life. Today was meant for planning and for dreams. But Tomorrow, now, he’d mend those broken steps and maybe ask Celeste to be his wife.
And so he “wondered” down his days and nights through summer’s heat and autumn’s gentle rain and watched the springs and winters come and go day after day - but Tomorrow never came.
With nothing done, he’s resting quietly now beneath the broken steps through which he fell. They’d come - his neighbors - to the spot and pause and sometimes, they would even sit a spell.
“He was a good man, after all,”they’d say, “And now he knows - TOMORROW IS TODAY.”
