The Struggle for Authenticity Beckons

And now, the struggle for authenticity beckons. The fight for what is real in our world, in our nation, and in ourselves, that fight exists whether we participate in it or not.

War is real. Syria is real. Children dying, their small bodies broken in pieces, blood running from their frail faces. That is real.

Iraq is real. Afghanistan. Yemen. The horror that stalks the days there, the screams heard through the nights. The innocent brutalized. The cities decimated. Those are all real.

We ignore it. We pretend those things are far away from here, that we are not a part of it, that we have no responsibility for it. We close our eyes, our minds, our hearts to it.

I can’t turn away, can you?

And here, in dear old America, our flag sags under the weight of our mutual shame. Reagan’s tired description of us, “a shining city on a hill,” rings discordant, empty, false. We do not shine; we are tarnished with the stains of our selfishness, our shallow cravings, our racism and our political circus. We do not sit high above others. We have collapsed into a valley of our own making, a place that too often feels soiled, harsh, unwelcoming.

Immigrant children locked in wire cages, their parents hauled off to some distant city, lost in a shuffle of government incompetency and callowness. Or, shipped off to the violent lands they came from, perhaps never to see their children again. What kind of nation does that? We do.

The now primitive training of our police forces that tells them to disregard every instinct but danger and threat, to pull their weapons instantly without stopping to fully take in the scene or to think, but to simply react in fear of their lives, to kill before they have time to assess if they are even at risk.

And this ruthless, inhuman response to suspects, most of whom are completely unarmed, most of them black, is tolerated, accepted, and now routine. It rips the fabric of our democracy into rags of dishonor and disgrace.

Our nation is defined by white vs people of color; rich vs everyone else; citizens vs immigrants; blue states vs red states; Republicans vs Democrats; Trump lovers vs Trump haters. The divisions seem interminable.

Am I wrong? Am I being unreasonable? Unjustifiably critical?

The Persian poet, Rumi, wrote,

“I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,
and the falling away. What is, and what isn't.
You the one in all,
say who I am. Say I am You.”

If only we could get to that kind of wisdom and live by it. If only we could mature into a unity of kinship, mutual respect, and cooperation. Then we would be worthy of being called The United States of America.

Until then, the struggle for authenticity beckons. The fight for what is real continues.

© 2018 Timothy Moody