American wisdom

I’m not sure why, but I’ve always been fascinated by the Kennedys. Perhaps it all began because of the JFK book on the coffee table in my childhood den, one I spent countless rainy days pondering. Because I was born in November just a couple years after his assassination, there was a strange lure in its pages, as if somehow, we were connected. A picture of JFK sitting in the Oval Office, feet on a coffee table with the president in deep thought, sits on my desk today, a testimony to the lure and lore of those days.

Later, I became a student of the Kennedys, especially RFK, reading biographies and discovering amidst their sins, an incredible amount of wisdom. None of them were perfect; no human is. But in their leadership we saw something beyond them, something deeper, something that bore wisdom into our world despite the raw humanity of the lives they lived.

If one looks back on their rhetoric, and indeed to generations of politicians, one is immediately struck by the contrast with today’s elected leaders. From Archimedes to Socrates to Jesus to Gandhi, prior generations were walking Bartlett’s Quotations. In seeking a deeper meaning, a deeper wisdom through the ages, they believed answers would emerge. Divergent points of view had to be held in contrast, indeed valued in contrast, so that wisdom could find her way into the room.

Today feels a whole lot like 1968 but without this core value of divergence. I may have been a toddler, but I’m reaching back to the 1960s because in the midst of our current milieu, it seems to be one of the more relevant eras to teach us. If we are not careful, if we cannot learn from our ancestors, we are bound to repeat their mistakes and squander our inherited opportunities.

How do we give ourselves to divergent points of view once again, praying for wisdom to show up in the room?

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest and writer, says that we cannot get rid of our sin too quickly or we won’t learn from it; it’ll just return to us in new forms generation after generation. (Falling Upward, 61). And from my point of view, our chief problem in America is that we cannot confess our sins. Heck, we can’t even admit that we have any. We have become so enamored by our success and the myth of it that we cannot see the deeper American principles that were to guide wisdom into all the rooms of our country.

Our Founders and Framers were not of one mind. People who create the myth that they were subscribe to history that is merely multiple choice and true/false rather than essay. The overarching principle of the new American experiment was divergence and difference. The Framers hoped that divergent points of view could co-exist until wisdom could emerge. They did not seem to care that wisdom would be associated with any one person or party. They wanted the desire for wisdom among divergence to permeate the country itself. The hope was for a marketplace of ideas to emerge, from a free and educated people, so that wisdom and truth could find their way into the fabric of the entire social order. It was this deep and overarching desire that was to be the American ideal. And while they embodied the sins of their day as we embody ours, at least they valued a system that would challenge their hearts, souls, and minds to change and adapt through divergent points of view.

Back to 1968. Robert Kennedy began to tell us the truth about who we were as a nation. He exposed oppression. He exposed systemic racism. He exposed lack of health care and education. And he did so by appealing to wisdom. He asked us to confess. To seek absolution. Just listen to his words:

“Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.”

“Ultimately, America’s answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.”

“What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists, is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.”

“All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don’t. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity.”

This morning, writing this column, I came across a Facebook post from a friend who is a firefighter in Sandy Springs, Georgia. It’s a confession of sorts, the kind we all need to hear from our lips these days. He confessed,

“I realized something today. I was born into a wealthy family. I was born into success. I was born into a lifestyle that I had no control over but I was blessed beyond measure. I have been so upset with the way things have been going in this world. So angry with the things that have been happening. I was hit like a ton of bricks today watching a group of kids playing in a very poor area that could have been me. I have walked around my entire life with such an arrogance really not even realizing I had it. What if I had been born where these kids were born? What if I knew what it was like to feel hunger? Hear my parents fight if they were there? What if I had felt the agony of watching my parents do whatever, and I mean whatever means possible to provide for me? Who would I be?? I am a product of who raised me. I am so very blessed to have parents who love me, and gave their lives for me so I would never have known any of these pains. But what if I didn’t have them?? Who would I be? I was raised to work very hard. I was raised to provide for my family. I was raised to love, to help, to respect authority. But what if I had not been. For the first time in my life I am seeing that and kind of understanding where this is coming from. I am ashamed of my self. The hate that is building in this country is breaking my heart. I will be praying for this country and everyone in it. I mean everyone. We are all brothers and sisters. We are all friends and family. We all are together in this world. Let’s try as a nation to see where the person you disagree with is coming from. It might just open your eyes.”

Diversity seeking wisdom. Valuing the other. Confessing sins.

The American Experiment that is still worth pursuing.