"WE'VE ALL COME TO LOOK FOR AMERICA"

“WE’VE ALL COME TO LOOK FOR AMERICA”

            I recently heard from my friend and colleague, Collin ‘Cornell, who did such a great job of editing my 2017 book of sermons: “Deeper Waters: Sermons for a New Vision.”  He began his e-mail this way:  “What a strange and potentially transformative season we are in. I am not sure yet if this pandemic will be the final blow to capitalism and the incentive to move towards a more human welfare state---or if this will precipitate our national slide into fascism.” 

His succinct summation of our current situation reminded me that in this fearful time, we have a crisis that presents us with great danger as well as great opportunities.  It gives us fresh opportunities to re-shape the idea of America.  This crisis has already provoked fundamental changes in our way of living, and I will be stunned (but grateful) if we avoid something akin to the Great Depression.   The health and economic costs will be devastating, yet in this terrible time, there are opportunities to look for America, to paraphrase Paul Simon’s great song “America.”  Let us all go looking for America in these perilous times.

            The changes are already upon us, but they have only just begun.  Our healthcare system, which already rationed health care in a terrible way, will likely sink even further into ruination.  I’m not economically astute enough to predict what will happen to the economy, but I do know that many small businesses will not make it back.   Our national leadership has been awful – indeed, Caroline has taken to calling it the Trumpdemic.  Even though he looks overwhelmed, I do believe that the president is already scheming to prevent the 2020 presidential elections, as well as giving serious thought to suspending constitutional rights, if things get bad enough, allowing him to assume the kingly role that he so obviously wants.

            This is a nightmare scenario, but even here, there are opportunities to develop a new vision of America, to have all of us look for America.  We have a powerful idea at our core – the idea of equality, the idea that we were all created with equal dignity.  Trump’s base wants to take us back to a time when it was seen and acknowledged that white men were supreme, that all others were lesser beings.  This crisis has the danger of allowing even more erosion of the idea of equality, but it also gives us the opportunity to recalibrate the idea of America.  Congress will likely act this week to do what the Trump base would call “socialism,” and the more aid for “ordinary” people and not giant corporations, the better.  There will likely be a time limit to this “democratic socialism,” but let us gather our minds and our hearts to help develop this vision so that it becomes permanent rather than temporary:  health care for all, guaranteed annual income, care for the planet, use of jails and prisons for only those who cannot live in society rather than a prison-industrial complex. 

            As I wrote last week, I am hoping that Trump is right, that the coronavirus pandemic is subsiding and will disappear quickly.  Yet, to say such is to believe that the world is flat.  All empirical evidence points otherwise, and I am grateful to the health professionals, the health care workers and the public health leaders who are seeking to get us through this crisis without a total breakdown of our systems.  I am grateful for those political leaders who are taking the pandemic seriously, and who are seeking ways to help us ease the pain and deaths.  And, I am grateful for all of us who are sheltering in place, who are helping others in our isolation, and who are longing for a different kind of America.  Only a few prescient ones of us know what will happen in the long term to America.

 In our days of isolation, let us be thinking about and envisioning a new way of being America.  Let us not turn out to be the self-centered and mean regime that we now are experiencing.  Let us live that just and equitable vision that is one of our places of origin.  Let us all go to look for America, as individuals and as a community.  While we are away from one another physically, let us be the dreamers and visionaries that will enable us to live up to that great ideal that is part of our heart as a country:  “we hold these truths to be self-evident:  that all {people} are created equal.”