Out of the Fairytale Woods – Part 9 in The Twelve-step Plan to American Recovery

 

                     

 nce upon a time there was a country of riches and beauty and blessing. The people were free to work, to invent, to use their lives as they saw fit. They lived by laws that they all agreed with, laws that protected the right to worship God, to pursue happiness, to “become what [they could] become.” 

They also lived by the Five Laws of Reality. But as the people grew and prospered they forgot not only the Law of Freedom, exchanging it for the Law of False Security, but they also forgot the Laws of Reality and started to live by lies and false promises. They lived in a fairytale world.  

Then, the giant started down the beanstalk.

Hope is the Thing with Feathers -- Part 8 in The Twelve-Step Program to American Recovery

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,... Emily Dickinson

 Michael & Patricia Fogden/Minden Pictures/Getty Images 


 Today we drove over the Crater Lake pass in central Oregon.  There’s relatively little snow up there this year, but enough to remind me of Narnia when it was “always winter and never Christmas.” The highway tops out at close to 6,000 feet and becomes just a hallway that cuts through millions of Douglas firs that each stand 10 stories high. As far as the eye can penetrate on either side there’s just forest and snow. It looks like spring will never happen and all that will ever be is cold.

We’re living through a Narnian winter right now. On all sides we see things getting continually worse, and what glimmers of optimism we find often turn out to be false. I keep expecting to run into Tumnus and the White Witch is on TV daily. Every time our president speaks he kills off another part of the Constitution. The Republican primary has been a rocky affair. Iran is rattling its nuclear options, gas prices hit $4 today, and Obamacare is creeping down our necks. I could go on, but the ugly stuff is not my point.

Know Lots of Stuff – Part 7 of The Twelve-step Program for American Recovery

Scene – an improv workshop on the stage of Chicago City Limits, a crusty little theatre on the Upper East side of, confusingly, New York City.

Dramatis Personae – Phillip, the actor and teacher

                                  27 high school drama students

                                  Audience – me and several other chaperones

Action – Phillip led improv games, coaching, encouraging, critiquing all while tossing a tennis ball up the single aisle where a yellow lab waited by the entrance door. The dog would catch the ball then nudge it back down the aisle. The ball would roll to Phillip’s feet and the whole process would start again. Meanwhile Phillip continued to coach, push, and encourage and every now and then he’d say, “Know lots of stuff.”

The mandate was clear in the context – an actor might be asked to play a paraplegic, or an astronaut, or a cowboy, so he better “know lots of stuff.” But the more I thought about it the more I realized its broader applicability. As a teacher I was always being asked, “Why do we need to know this?” “When will I ever use that?” The questions annoyed me – couldn’t they see the obvious worth of my life’s work?  I had some good pat answers, but “Know lots of stuff,” allows no argument. Any worthwhile conversation requires a broad frame of reference. In any emergency knowledge is necessary. Knowing lots of stuff broadens opportunities and promotes success. Who wouldn’t want to KLOS?

I liked the line so much I painted it over my classroom door and for years thereafter all I had to do was point to the sign and the kids would nod and repeat the mantra KLOS; I was never asked the annoying questions again.

Let us First Love Him – Part 6 in the Twelve-step Program to American Recovery

 

Before we go any further with this, let’s take stock – how are we doing? Is there really anything wrong with America? Consider this….

 “There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God... “

(I Timothy2: 1-4).

Now, in technical, theological terms “the last days” refers to the Tribulation, the last 7 years of the Age of Israel leading up to the Second Coming of Christ. We’re not there yet – though we can hear the rapids approaching.

But granting that, we can apply this scripture as a measuring stick for our culture today --

• “Lovers of themselves?”  Are we?  Self-esteem is the one curriculum our public schools are teaching really well; this generation hasn’t been labeled the Me generation for nothing.

• “Lovers of money?” Check – We’re witnessing people selling out their country’s freedom and sovereignty for paper pretending to be money. We’ve seen our government back business so far into a corner that it’s chosen to climb in bed with that greedy government – a sort of Stockholm syndrome – siding with its abductor. And our poor, the richest poor in the world, are as greedy – and as dependent on the government -- as are many big corporations.

Of Salads and Dysfunction -- Part 5 of Twelve-step Program for an American Recovery

It was Abraham Lincoln who said, “A nation divided against its self cannot stand.” He was speaking in a context of civil war so his words carried that weight. The statement demands consideration in today’s context as well, and it brings me to my fifth step in re-establishing an America of promise – we have to start thinking of ourselves as Americans first

I am a woman, but I am pre-eminently an American – my female DNA is a choice God made for me and does not determine my political allegiances. I am an American. I have Danish-Dutch-Czech-Swiss ancestry, but that is just interesting, conversational fodder, not an issue on which I vote.  I am a senior citizen, which mostly affects my speed – how quickly I can unbend after sitting a while, how long it takes me to do my make-up, how fast I drive – but it doesn’t make me part of a voting block. I am an individual – an American.

Part 4 – Twelve-step Program for American Recovery

 In previous sections of this series I’ve concentrated on what’s wrong with all of us – which is all we have real control over. This week I’ll get around eventually to picking on you and me, but I’m going to start with Them.

The Faceless, “Omnipotent” They

I’m really getting tired of these people, these people who run things. I’m even more tired of the rest of us letting them. They have power over the most important parts of our lives, yet They are a creepy, shadowy lot. Some who run for office show us their official faces, but Barack Obama, A.K.A Barry Soetoro, for instance, is still a mystery. Some, like Ben Bernanke, land fairly public jobs, but mostly They skulk around in marble-walled offices turning the tumblers on bank vaults. Now and then we learn the names of the scientists who make major “discoveries,” but rarely do They come out from behind those white coats. Who are those guys inventing more deadly forms of bird flu?