Hope in a less than Hopeful Time

Was there ever a year when we needed an Easter more? I think not. There is restlessness in the land. People are scared and many are showing their fear in terribly destructive ways. Pundits left and right say the sky is falling. You can footnote their charges in almost any direction: education, finance, health care, war on terror, foreclosures and death threats in Washington. The church—like most of our politicians are timid and cautious—and seem to have few answers. Those in Montgomery and Capitol Hill squabble like children in a sand box. The media helps little with their diversions from our own terrors with stories of Tiger, Sandra Bullock and American Idol. We say we fear death panels and Alzheimer’s. But behind our masks the real fear is our own death and those we love.

Someone has called our malady declinism. It is the pathological belief that things were once much better and our best days are behind us. Declinism says that we stand hopeless before computer crashes and the divorces of our children. Technology helps little when we try to connect a new TV to work or figure out an iphone. If you have ever been put on hold for 20 minutes, hearing terrible music, hoping to talk to a real person about your problem--you know something is wrong.

But we need to put declinism in perspective. We Americans have forgotten our history lessons. Those who talk misty-eyed about founding fathers and the real intent of the Constitution have a short memory. We forget the skeletons in our forebear’s closets and the privileged protection of white male landowners lurking behind the pages of our Constitution. The good old days were not so good when you look in any history book. FDR was called a Socialist and Communist for inaugurating Social Security, Truman was despised for desegregating the military and Reagan was almost assassinated.

And in this climate, Easter comes like the rising of the sun after a terrible storm. How much we need this day that promises hope and new life and fresh starts. In the supposedly good old days flawed patriots, all-too-human preachers and ordinary folk got back up and started again. The depression did not break their backs or spirits. Declinism did not kill them. They had a country to build.

Someone recently said that of the three basic qualities: knowledge, attitude and experience—attitude will always carry the day. Let’s put away our guns and tea bags. Let liberals quit looking down their noses at all those others. And let conservatives let their blood pressure settle down. We’re all in one big leaky boat together.

Together we can fix the leaks if we believe what we do matters. Knowing that this time is our time on stage. We need to remember that the Red Sea parted at the most unlikely of times and one morning in a graveyard a stone—impossible to move—rolled away.

Put on your duds and go to church or Synagogue or Mosque. Burn candles of hope. Smell the lilies. Teach little children. Forgive enemies. Be patient with those who are walking slowly. Send money to Haiti. Build a Habitat house. Work for a better day. Be kind and patient with one another—especially those with whom we disagree. The greatest generation may be yet to come. Wouldn’t it be something if we made that happen?

Remember the old quote:

                  Fear knocked at the door,

                 Faith answered.

                 No one was there.

The best is yet to be. I call that Easter hope.

This article appeared in the Op Ed section of The Birmingham News, Birmingham, AL., April 4, 2010.

 (The stained glass window which appears above hangs over the altar of the Church of St. Marys the Virgin, two miles up the Thames River in the village of Iffley. This church has served that parish since 1170 and is one of the finest examples of Romanesque architecture in England.)