Storm Clouds
As yet unpublished editorial, written sometime during Bush’s second term
I haven’t slept very well lately. I suppose I could attribute it to the fact that I am now 50 years old or that daylight savings time has thrown me off a bit. But it’s more, much more than simply old bones or my internal clock gone awry.
I’m overwhelmed by the brewing storms of wars abroad and the resultant deaths of young Americans and others, by the disingenuous nature of our domestic politics that attempts to define patriotism as some quantifiable amount of public flag waving, and by the increasingly gut-wrenching encounters I’ve had in my own work with the poor, the mentally ill, and the elderly.
Most of all, I worry about the soul of this country. Things seem to have reached some critical mass that I’ve never experienced in my half-century of existence and I am genuinely burdened, both by the individual magnitude of each new tragedy and the cumulative pathos that has slowly eroded my peace of mind.
I remember feeling something similar many years ago as a young boy in Arkansas, sitting up late at night watching thunderstorms on the radar on television, large irregular ghostly white patches revealed with each sweep on the black screen, creeping insidiously toward the small dot on the map that represented my supposedly safe home.
They seemed nothing more than harmless abstractions until they arrived at the front door with hail the size of golf balls that stripped the paint off of houses, winds that bowed the hundred-foot-tall pine trees in our back yard nearly parallel to the ground, and stealthily lurking tornadoes from which we hid frightened and trembling in our bathroom. As if a few extra pipes in the ground could save us from being swept away by winds that could drive coat hangers through telephone poles.
I sense those dark vortices out there now. I saw one recently that swept away the lives of over 20 young Marines in Iraq, most of them mere youngsters trying to make a better life for themselves when that very life was ripped away forever. More were spawned by the administration’s endlessly vacuous attempts to justify the campaign against Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11 and whose supposedly imminently threatening weapons of mass destruction apparently never had any true mass in the first place.
I’ve shut my ears to the drone of the wind from political pundits who translate yesterday’s hero into today’s goat. I look for leadership and hear only clever dodges of direct responsibility by those entrusted with it.
I still find hope in the courage shown by the poor, the elderly, and the mentally ill people that I meet in my job every day. But darkness is creeping in there, too. I see more people now who have no place to turn…not because they aren’t still looking but because the majority of us have decided they don’t really need the little that they already have. I see sick people who can’t afford their medications, men my age who’ve lost their will to live, senior citizens who have been conned out of their life savings, disabled individuals who are abused and violated, and children whose futures are mortgaged in a national deficit that seemingly has no end. I see the growing numbers of beggars on the corners and wonder how far I really might be from where they are…and whether they ever sat in their own cars asking themselves that question.
But I haven’t lost hope yet. My 21-year military career reminds me that there are genuine heroes and leaders who love this country, not just the flag but its basic principles of charity and equal opportunity. My years of living abroad remind me that the world is not as black and white as it is often portrayed. My own life experiences help me remember that light at the end of the tunnel is not necessarily an oncoming train. My wife and my family keep me centered on what is truly important in this world and my faith in God sustains me through the dark times.
Even so, just like when the thunderstorms came, I find myself these days looking around me for a few extra pipes to hang onto and praying that this time they really will hold us all together as the winds sweep by. But I just don’t see them anywhere right now.
