Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
—Langston Hughes, 1935
A minister friend said something to me the other day that got my attention. We were talking about the national turmoil confronting us and I asked him what he thought about it all. He paused for a moment, then said, “I see a spiritual battle taking place.”
“You mean our own spirits?” I asked, only too aware of my own internal conflicts. “That we are torn between loving everyone and hating what some people are doing?”
“No,” he said. “I mean angels battling in the sky.” He then described what sounded like a scene from the Book of Revelations: a winged beast with seven eyes. Trumpets blowing. Chariots of fire. A battle royale in the heavens.
I’ve been musing about that ever since, for I think my friend may be onto something.
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
When I was a kid, my younger brother John and I got into a lot of tussles. Our father never paid much attention to us, but if we were yelling at each other or throwing things and disturbing a baseball game on TV, Dad would intervene.
“This is not a gymnasium,” Dad would say, using the erudite form of the word like the high school English teacher he was. “Take it outside.” I know now what he knew then: that once the fight was taken outdoors, it would fizzle out. In that open space it was no longer spectacle and my opponent—my brother—seemed smaller and less threatening against the backdrop of trees and the expanding sky.
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
There is a spiritual battle taking place right now. The assaults on our sensibilities, turbo-charged during the runup to the 2016 election and its aftermath, are now off the rails. Parallels to Nazi Germany abound. I can see angels and demons duking it out in the heavens. And you know, I take some comfort in that.
It eases my mind to think there is a place where these massive shifts in what is acceptable behavior in this country, the wholesale plunge to the bottom of the barrel, are smaller in size and scope. It helps me to think that what is happening now is very temporary against the gargantuan scale of Heaven Standard Time. And so I am urged to take our current civil war outside. To take the fight for our nation’s soul … upside.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
Upside is the ultimate battleground, outside of space and time, where eternity is the clock and infinity is the playing field. In this arena, what the oligarchs and the rest of the autocrat-enabling class are doing that seems so large is really so, so small. It is just hard for me to believe that in a universe with billions of galaxies and (at last count) hundreds of quintillions of earth-like planets, God chose this one tiny pin-prick of a water-heavy sphere to work out all His issues. The real tragedy of humankind is that all the violence suffered over millennia in the name of religion—in the name of God!—has been based on differences that are actually very petty seen against the grand scheme of mystery.
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!
If you believe, as I do, that the spirit of life and love, an unnameable benevolence, is at work in the universe, then you might also take hope, as I do, that there are larger forces at work than those brought on by our pendulum-swinging every-four-year electoral cycle. Try looking at the battle outside of politics, outside of the 24-hour news cycle, outside of bad legislation and revenge-tinged decrees and horrendous cabinet appointments that will come and go. Yes, those actions will create real harm (they already are) and we are in for a rough ride. Just remember to look up now and then. It’s there, up there where angels and demons dwell, that all the pettiness seems smaller still, pathetic even, and victory in the long run more likely. The angels were here first, and the battle has been joined.
Heaven Standard Time - will take that! Upside - will take that.
I aspire to build an upward heaven destined attitude
Still struggling with the small, nasty, petty, mean REALITY that is slamming people's lives into misery around the world thanks to DJT the choice of the USA electorate. I am so ashamed.