America, I Mean

I saw that bumper sticker again today. The one that says, “God bless America.”

Why? Is She sick?

Not God, I mean. America.


Maybe it’s just me.

Every time I hear a prayer asking for God’s blessings, my first thought is of someone sick. Someone ill. Someone hurt.

“God, bless Grandma Bibby, please. The cancer is eating away at her, and when she looks up at me, it’s as if she doesn’t know whether oblivion is a good thing or a bad one.

“When Grandmother looks up, I don’t know either.

“I don’t know, and more don’t know what to make of the world.”


Is America in that way?

I mean, do all the Hondas and Mazdas and Mitsubishis with all the bumper stickers, zipping around quicker than a motherfucker, is that what they imply. That America is crying, I am ill?


I doubt it. But maybe it’s just me.

I certainly have heard the sermons lance out from the TV and talk radio pulpits, and damned but if their view of America doesn’t seem dim.

Apocalyptic warnings abound, right around the time these preachers will teach you that decadence festers in all the streets.

Gay agendas and gender benders and Reefer Madness.

Wickedness and sodomy. And what of all the drunken revels. And college girls giving it up to the sound of Aaron Neville, and unbridled lust.

Isn’t that just what the Beatles told us is all we need?

The wrath of God will vent, pour burning oil down, they’ll warn, unless sickly America repents, and takes up its crowns of thorns.

That America would deserve a blessing, I’m sure. Or something close.

But if it were real, wouldn’t it just as much deserve an opiate overdose?

A needle, slipping just beneath the skin. An end to its misery. Why, if America is so bad, for you and me, do they pray for Her a blessing, rather than a cleansing? Why don’t they ask for America’s fall, so that they can set up their tall, 40-foot Jesuses, and build the estate they’ve always wanted.

A great mirror to the Taliban. Omar and Osama can send love letters. We’re your biggest fans.


Or could it be me?

I almost forgot. On top of it all there’s another kind of soul we ask blessings for. Protection, for someone who could be in harm’s way.

“Abba, guard my friend, Aaron, would you, in those Afghani mountains, where the bombs drop in pillars of fire, and a faithless woman back home has shredded his heart, and I wonder if he’ll seek the arc of a bursting shell to complete the job.

“Abba, guard Aaron, when the ones who have sent him there are the very ones to forget him as they chase shadows of ghosts in other lands.” In Poppy’s Name we pray.

Do the drivers in those bumper stickered cars see America as the battered and outnumbered soldier, boldly standing fast as the enemy shatters the perimeter, storms the twilight ridge on which our man makes what looks like a last stand?


I don’t. Though it could just be me.

At Cowpens, and Gettyburg, Normandy, I know the story may have been different. And if it came to all that, I’d stand by the man, or woman, on the hill.

But a lonely warrior, on the verge of being overwhelmed, has little more than heroism to tout. And I hear the same people, shouting “God Bless America!” playing the age-old game. The game that says, “look how blessed we already are. It is proof of God’s favor.”

Welcome to our bistro; what will it be today? Would you prefer the flavor of our cobbled tautology, or the freshly toppled eschatology?

But when the favor seems gone, when the blitzkrieg through Kabul and Khandahar have gone from current events to ancient history, and the “Mission Accomplished” banner have been re-furled, what in the world do we have left?

When the body count rises, and flag-draped coffins slide off the ramps of the psychopomp transports.

Then virtue miraculously shifts, from what is measured by success, to what measures are brought against us. The world is the Devil’s playground again, as if God has abandoned power in this sphere. And the saints are always beleaguered, and in need of every blessing they can get.


It could just be me.

But how can they be making their plea, when they just moments ago put Her on a pedestal? America, I mean?


When, like She were a white Tyger stalking Her gilded cage, they proclaimed that She was the strongest, the smartest, the fastest Beast on all the Earth?

Then again, for now She might be.


I’ll admit to my own impatience, with the wine of discontent, at times. You see, I’ll make you admit that a cottage industry seems always to arise, amid the flies and rats of every ghetto. Just because it isn’t quite settled, you know.

There are remnants of slaveries, long past and more recent. But it seems the prophets are unwilling to concede, that any progress at all has been made, as if the passion to complete the job will fade, without the righteous indignation.

As if to concede that we’re halfway there, or more, might make us complacent on the trek across the desert, and we won’t finish the job unless we believe we’ve hardly started to walk.

Maybe it’s just me.

But I think it’s not true. I think that the fire of beginnings can never be re-stolen, unless for other beginnings; and the despair of knowing how far we’ve walked, and thinking we’ve gone almost nowhere, would damn our drive all the more.

And so I empathize, with the same frustration that drives the bumper sticker guys, sometimes.

But they mistake the look in my eyes, when they think it makes me their brother. Because the old Arab proverb is dead wrong. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.

Because, my friend, America has already been blessed.

And that’s the test. What are we going to do with it?

I have a friend who knows what questions to ask. He’s newly joined a far older cast of Chosen People. And he weeps, inside, I know, over the struggle in his own peoples’ souls, over that word. Chosen.

What does it mean to be God’s favorite child?

Is there any wonder that that claim could inspire ire? That what might transpire is backlash, with teeth that gnash and bite. And snarl, “You think you’re so special?”

He knows some of his People actually want to say it. Yes. I am.

But so many others hear the word chosen, and see it is a calling. Not a special privilege, but falling on them, a special burden. To lead by example. Not to take from the world, but to give.

Who is America, I wonder, that anyone should ask for blessing for Her? Magnificent Beast, strong and astride the world. Already blessed, beyond compare.

What a mockery, that any filthy egotist would dare think She should have more. To hoard even more blessings to Herself, when She should call on herself to give.

That’s the America I live in hopes of seeing.

But maybe it’s just me.

I know the spirit driving that car, in front of me, with that bumper sticker, isn’t likely to be so generous.

“God Bless America,” it says to us.


Why? Is She sick?

God, I mean?

Or maybe it’s just me.