America's Initiation

published by OpEdNews.com

There are moments when we are called to our greatness as a country. Tomorrow is one of those moments – Will we turn from our downward trajectory towards a brighter tomorrow? Or do we need a still more jarring wake-up call?

There’s an odd way that the Bush regime has been necessary for America. America resembles a teenager in a growth spurt – stumbling over itself in clumsy ways, flexing its muscles awkwardly, seeking approval and then showing off, acting impetuously, and often deceptively. With more than a dose of braggadocio, we have managed to gain more power in the world than we have learned to wield with wisdom, like a boy suddenly arriving into manly power. Raw power does not grant maturity and these last years have demonstrated that we are not a mature nation yet.

The Bush administration has illuminated the many ways that we still need to grow. For that, we should be grateful. We have needed George W. Bush and his administration to develop an intimate relationship with the shadow side of American power. This relationship is itself an initiation into something greater. Initiations in traditional cultures were often death-defying and terrifying, involving bodily danger and intense emotion. The psyche does not release its grip on yesterday’s roles easily – a shock is often required. An initiation, properly guided, is like a miniature death, as the old patterns give way to a new identity.

America has needed an initiation and Bush and Cheney have provided the opportunity.

Personally, I had always turned away from the political process, hoping like a child that closing my eyes would banish what I feared. For most of my adult life, I hoped that politics would rectify itself somehow, without my needing to spend time, money, and heart on trying to change it. I was wrong. Many of us were wrong.

Bush has been our initiation into political maturity, forcing us to recognize that we have a moral and spiritual obligation to steward our country wisely, not just for ourselves but for the sake of billions who are affected by our policies and our actions but cannot vote. If we do not engage politically, we are complicit in exploitation, war, environmental destruction and misdeeds. We betray our brethren abroad and we prevent our maturation as a country. We are also pulling the trigger.

As I think about voting tomorrow and the long trail of activities that preceded it, I find myself grateful for the awakening the Bush administration has provided for me, an intense training in how power corrupts and how fear paralyzes wisdom. Entering tomorrow, I feel less naïve and more open-eyed, having faced the shadow so fiercely for so many months. Oddly, I feel much more hopeful as the little awakenings that I have witnessed in myself and those around me ripple across this nation. The flame of understanding, once lit, is not easily blown out.

We are now ready, I believe, to step into greater maturity as a country. And as we vote for Kerry and pray for grace, let us also treat those who sleep lovingly, shaking them slowly from their slumbers. We want a better country for them as well, so we should treat them graciously, even in victory.

As I write this, my final political article of the season, I feel a satisfying fatigue in my fingers and, more significantly, a pleasant tiredness in my soul. I have done what I was capable of doing to contribute to America’s political awakening. And while I may never know the impact that I personally have had in this race, what I do know is that I have gone through my political initiation and will never be the same.

Beginnings and endings invite poetry, especially as we stand on the cusp of the unknown. So I will close with a poem:

A gentle wind rustles the leaves
Of autumn
Whispering its secret:
Change cannot be
Avoided.
The flush of summer
Has prepared us for the
Sobriety of
Winter’s chill.
As we enter
The world
Between seasons
May we drop our leaves
Gracefully
Letting our naked branches,
Stripped of cheery
Greenery
Welcome the
Blossoms of an as-yet
Unseen year,
May we sense how
Our branches link
To one set of Roots,
And are kissed
By the same Sun
The wind caressing
Tired leaves
Into a tender
Abyss.