Retirement is strange but I’m beginning to like it. It’s part of the American Dream, along with a house, a two car garage, and two cars parked on the street because the garage is full of stuff no longer needed. Thankfully that last part isn’t true of us.
I once thought that the American Dream was more of a nightmare. I’m beginning to notice that nightmares is what America is about. We are addicted to fear. We crave nightmares. How else can one explain the constant onslaught of bad news and running commentary how it all means the end of the world as we know it?
I never expected to live until retirement. Nuclear war, continuous warfare somewhere all the time, an asteroid hitting Earth, poisoned water and air, and that was just 1970. Yet here I am, now supposed to fear the end of social security, the monetary system ending, citizenship up for grabs, and so it goes.
I do not mean to minimize the challenges facing us. Fear simply won’t help us get anywhere. I simply wonder how we can move away from fear’s tendency to paralyze or cause hysteria.
Waiting in the desert for what would happen next in the months following the first attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941), a few of us were wondering what it would take to bring peace to Afghanistan.
There seemed to be an unholy trinity of despair, poverty, and drugs that fed into each other. Poverty causing despair that could be numbed by drugs. It seemed like the three things needed for a fire, fuel, oxygen, and heat. Take one away and the cycle would stop. These thoughts came about while thinking of the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, and then, the War on Terrorism.
The prayer of St. Francis came to mind, “Where there is despair, hope.”
What could give hope to Afghanistan? Our plan was simple. Since both Germany and France wanted to provide funds, at the time, almost immediately turned down by us. Remember freedom fries, instead of French Fries? But why not use the money, with German expertise in building chalets in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains for ski resorts? It could replace the need for harvesting poppies for opium in the same area. Build canals, underground, as the Afghanis had been doing since the dawn of their civilization, from the Himalayas to the dry wadi where we were camping out, to build a lake and a resort? People tend not to terrorize others if they have a nice place to live and take vacations. And there would be jobs, an economy, a community, and perhaps even poverty would go away. Although, as the saints discover, poverty is not such a bad thing when it’s voluntary.
I remember how happy and content I was with only a backpack, two changes of clothes, a communion kit, and a supply of meals ready to eat (MREs) and water flown in courtesy of the US military of which I was a member.
In these days of reports of the end of the world as we know it, remember these words, which I will be preaching on in a couple of weeks:
Then whoever invokes a blessing in the land shall bless by the God of Amen,
And whoever takes an oath in the land shall swear by the God of Amen,
because the former troubles are forgotten and are hidden from my sight.
Isaiah 65: 16 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, with “faithfulness” replaced by the original Hebrew transliterated to Amen.
This is for what and for whom we wait. If you need a picture of what we are waiting for, take a look at Isaiah 65: 17-25, any version, any language. The photo is a hint.
Be well.