Divine Plagiarism

From my admittedly limited understanding of psychology, I recall that emotions are wrapped around facts and events. Recalling the event brings back the feelings. Without something concrete for the feelings to coalesce around, they simply drift through the psyche, moving with the tides of moods. So it stands to reason that when the facts and details start to fade, the feelings should as well. One would think, at least.

I once heard memory described like the healing of a wound. A newly received laceration shows up front and center in your consciousness. It will push other thoughts out of the way to make room, if needs be. The klaxons of pain tell you to do something about it, the classic ‘fight or flight’ response. The wound then scabs over. It remains in the background of your consciousness itching as it heals. When you touch the wound, it moves to the foreground. During this phase of healing, the best thing you can do is leave the wound alone. The worst thing you can do is pick the scab. Eventually, the wound will turn to scar. Once it does, it causes no more pain. This does not mean the wound is all the way gone, though. At first, the scar is brightly colored. That distinctive pink-red line will remind you of the wound, whenever you see it. As time passes, the coloring leaves the scar, fading to the color of the surrounding skin. As it does, it will take more and more to remind you of the wound, until one day it completely fades. Then, nothing but the most determined of searches will recall the wound.

Something happened about a week ago that I did not expect. I could not recall the name of her blog. This is a little thing, I know, but it means a big deal to me. Some back story. Five months ago, after the last unpleasant conversation between her and I, I determined I would not pick the scabs. All things directly related to her were filed away or otherwise buried. All the emails between us stored in an archive that I do not open. All reading of her blog was strictly verboten. My copy of the mix CD I made for her filed away somewhere in my closet. The two Anthropology books she recommended, well, I read them. I hate having unread books. Then I gave them away. All the fragments of C. were eradicated from my life. The only eyes that I would see her through would be those of her Father. My pursuit would be a pure pursuit, a pursuit with my prayers and with them alone.

At first, there was a strong temptation to pick the wound. I wanted something to explain what had happened, something to bring stability to the frameworks, something to make it all make sense. I wanted to pore over the emails, analyzing for some hidden aspect of her personality I had missed. I wanted to read her blog, wanted to deconstruct and reconstruct her words, to pick them apart for meaning. I wanted some sense of the good times that never were, and I wanted to recall the few good times that actually were, times when she would smile at me and say things like ‘you have honored me. Thank you.’ I did none of these things. I thank God for that. As He healed that wound, the immediacy of this temptation diminished, as did the immediacy of the memories. I did not expect them to disappear so completely, though.

It is not that I forgot. There are conversations that I remember verbatim. There are images of her that are branded on my memory. Her twirling her hair between her fingers at a coffeeshop near school. Her profile, sitting next to me in an airplane a few thousand feet above Boston. The little freckles on her face. I do not see myself forgetting these things. The pitch of her voice. The way she laughs. I did not forget. But I did forget the name of her blog. I forgot the website. When I tried to recall it, it was more from curiosity. I did not pull it up, of course. At this point, I don’t even want to read it. This is God’s story. I want Him to write the ending. I want to hear that ending from Him, not from her. After all, this story is between Him and me, not between me and her.

Still, the fragments of C. seem to have lost their power. I do not have to actively shove them from my consciousness. My mind seems to want to focus on God, instead of wrapping itself in circles around the pieces of her in my head. I don’t have to fight it. And this is a welcome change. I think it had already happened. It took something like not being able to remember to bring the change to my attention. Realizing the change, I feel it in my heart. I do not have to fight to forgive her. Toward her, I do not have to rebuke unforgiveness, bitterness, vengefulness, or any other -ness on a regular basis. I remember when that was a constant mental discipline. So my anger fades with my memories. Even if particularly intense, none of this sequence is completely unfamiliar. Get hurt, get angry, forgive, forgive again, forgive until you forget. Then it goes away. Well, not unfamiliar up to this point. It didn’t go away. Not the way I feel about her. Not my prayers. Not the simple, inescapable fact that I still love her. Even as the memories dropped off, that remains still front and center in my consciousness. I do not know how to explain this.

That I feel for her has not changed. How I feel for her has changed. Not so much in direction, though… it has become simpler, more constant, more at peace. A storm’s wind may predominantly blow in one direction overall, but from moment to moment it gusts, shifts, and blows every which way. It may even blow the exact opposite way at times. It is not simple, not constant, not at peace. In the steady wind, the waves still lap, but they all lap one direction. It is the steady wind that moves a ship, not the tempest. So what is the difference between the steady wind and the storm? The storm is the result of two colliding masses of air. The strong wind is the child of one air mass. Take the opposing air mass from the storm, and you are left with the steady wind. So it is with me. As my memories fell away, so did my anger. Falling away, I was left with just love. If there ever was a miracle in this story, it is this. I prayed five months ago that God would teach me to love her the way He does. I know with absolute certainty that loving her under these circumstances is well beyond my own feeble ability to love. If I am here now, it is because He has answered that prayer.

My prayers are simple now. The waves move, and no less strongly. But they move in one direction. ‘Daddy, she’s Your daughter. You know what’s best for her. If I’m not a part of that, then please take this from my heart. If I am, then teach me to love her the way You do.’ I pray that He would wrap Himself around her, that He would comfort her, protect her and teach her. I pray that if there is anything that He and her have to work out, that He would work it out as gently as possible. I pray against all powers and principalities that would seek to interfere in her life. I like these simple prayers better. I know the Spirit will get it right. Hopefully these prayers will give Him something to work with. Hopefully He won’t have to spend as much time filtering.

I really am somewhat confused. And I am not sure that isn’t a good thing. I no longer hold on to hot shrapnel. My wounds feel healed; most of the pain has fallen away. The drive to control is nowhere near as strong. It is demon of control that drives us to pick the scabs: the pain gives us a degree of ownership in the situation. That demon is broken here. I abandon all the pain at the foot of the Cross. The scabs are healed. I throw my hands and my hope up into the air. I leave them raised. Jesus knows me better than I know myself. He knows my desires better than I do. He is faithful, and I trust Him. So I give this up to Him. Yet I still feel the same. Strange. I can’t say I understand. I’m not sure what any of this means. But I do know Who to ask.

I have to ask myself again, ‘what do I want from this?’ This is clearly not an academic discussion. My heart is on the line. I wouldn’t risk it simply to prove some point. My eyes tell me hope has failed. My heart does not. I knew with all my heart when this story started. I remember standing on the streets of Harvard square two days after meeting her, feeling a hundred things I never expected to feel . I remember figuring out how you know you have met ‘the one‘: when you meet a girl so incredible that you just don’t care if there is another ‘one’ out there. I remember understanding that you could love someone so much that you would want to continue her forever in children and grandchildren. I remember being ready to reshuffle career plans that had occupied center stage of my dreams for as long as I could remember. I had thought when guys would say ‘I’m the luckiest man in the world,‘ they were just being nice. I realized that they meant it. I was not waiting to fall in love. Really, three days before, my thoughts were almost completely focused on my upcoming pilot training. But fall in love I did, in a way I never had before. I am still there. Against my intentions several times over, I am still there. I’ve tried to write an ending. Several different endings, actually. None of them worked… my heart just wouldn’t buy it. I knew with all my heart when the story started. I believe I will know just as clearly when it has ended. I still believe this is His story. I am waiting for an ending fitting the Author.

I don’t know how this story goes. I don’t know when I will find the ending, or what ending it will be. My experience has been that feelings fade with memories, but they have not here. I don’t know how to forecast this. Perhaps the feelings will eventually fade as well. Perhaps this turns into some general sense of love to be affixed to my future spouse. Perhaps my hopes, against all odds, actually come to pass. Here is my deepest hope. I am a different man than the boy she knew. Strangely, I hope that she has become a different woman. More precisely, I hope that she has become the woman she was all along and was afraid to become. And in this light, perhaps it is appropriate that my memories fade of who she was. Perhaps we do meet each other again for the first time. But I don’t know. All of these are guesses, and I will not trust my heart to a guess, nor to a hypothetical, nor to wishful thinking. I place my faith in Jehovah Jireh. He will provide.

// 24 Oct 2007 Revision: NOTE TO EVERYBODY: This post has nothing at all to do with Academic Plagiarism. If you're trying to find a good essay for that eternal freshman-at-college question that they make you answer in introductory english or sociology or whatever class, then you're better served looking elsewhere. Oh the irony... plagiarizing an essay on plagiarism. I love it. Anyways.
//

I was reflecting on an unpleasant email I wrote a year or so back. It was in response to a boundary violation, someone addressing me with nice words but no respect, someone who had never been a friend to me assuming that we were close friends. I’ll spoil it. A girl who basically dumped me after a brief and shallow interaction emails me out of the blue a year later with a glowing and bubbling email about her new fiance, telling me how she’s so much in love and all of those sorts of things. I was not super pleased, for obvious reasons, not the least of which being that I had happily forgotten her. It’s generally not really cool to email people and tell them ‘I know you liked me once, and I know we’re not talking, but let me tell you all about this other guy and how awesome he is and how much happier I am to be with him than you.‘ Regardless, she had no business with some guy she only knew in a flirting sense (me) when she was about to pledge her heart to someone for the rest of her life.

My first response was standoffish, cordial and cold, in the hopes that person would get the hint and not email me again. She didn’t get that hint. Wrote me back another long, flowing email about how great this guy was and their wonderful plans for the future. I am all about rejoicing in the joys of others, but we should still guard each others’ hearts. My second email response was very blunt. Something along the lines of ‘may your marriage be blessed, but you have no real reason to be talking to me. Please cease to do so.’

This unfortunately reminded me of the email C. sent to me. I was in her position, in a way. I did not want to talk to this person. She did not want to talk to me. (Admittedly, the positive email she sent to me prior to my emailing her did confuse me a bit as to this.) I viewed this girl’s email as a boundary violation, C. viewed mine as one. My words were blunt, and C’s were blunt, amongst other things. So if this girl was wrong, perhaps I was as well.

But C. wasn’t right. I think this was the sticking point: I thought if I was wrong, that made her right. And I knew, totally knew, she was wrong. Her words stank of sulfur and burned like hellfire. She was wrong to say the things she said. She was wrong to attack me, wrong to go after my heart in that way. There is a difference between being blunt and being cruel. Bluntness says what it intends to say, regardless of whether it hurts. Cruelty says things in order to hurt a person, identifying and exploiting their weaknesses. Bluntness drops an answer like a sack of potatoes. Cruelty turns a knife. It is different. I said a prayer before sending that response. I did my best not to make it hurt. C intended to hurt me with her words. I forgive her, but that does not make her right. So I had to be right, because I knew she was wrong.

Unless, of course, her being wrong does not mean that I am right. Unless one being wrong does not make the other right. Unless we were both wrong. I very well may have been wrong, as well. If I am wrong, I ask God to convict me of it. I will not say ‘If I am wrong, then I repent.‘ I don’t like hypothetical repentance. Id rather be at least arraigned before pleading guilty. Once He does so, I will gladly repent. At least then I can understand and learn from it. At least then it’s legit.

‘There is a difference between being nice and being good.’ I think it has almost become cliché. I suppose, though, something can’t really become cliché unless it is invoked often to describe something pretty common, and this nice/good confusion is pretty common. We Christians even spiritualize it, with our smiling paper Jesus holding a smiling little lamb affixed to our Sunday School flannel boards. I think we forget the purpose for that spotless lamb smiling at us from atop blue flannel. A nice man does not take that cute little baby lamb and slit its throat in order to atone for the sin of his family. A good man does.

It is far easier to be nice. People never really can get mad at you for being nice. Being good is another matter entirely. Just ask the other Lamb from the flannel board. He was more good than any man ever has been or ever will be, and He died for it. Jesus Christ is not the flannel board’s perfectly nice milquetoast teacher of platitudes. He is the perfectly holy and horribly bloody mess of The Passion of the Christ. A perfectly nice God does not send His Son to die the most cruel death imaginable. A perfectly good God does. Jesus did not come to teach us how to be nice to each other. He came to show us how to love. It is a hard lesson to learn, and a big change for someone who has already learned how to be nice. I speak from experience. God is patient in His teaching, even as I am slow in the learning.

One of my strengths and my weaknesses is my tendency to see most things in black and white. I am good ‘totally trusted friend,’ and ‘completely distrusted enemy,’ but not many of the flavors in between. This tendency is good as a soldier. It provides a clarity of purpose and a strength of resolve. It is not so good in real relationships with other broken people. I have been learning that there are things between absolute trust and total enmity. In the process, I am realizing that the hardest fights are not the ’to-the-death’ variety. It is far harder to fight personal fights with people who I really care about, the murkier fights of real relationships.

‘Learn to stand up for yourself.’ It sounds so after-school-special. Yet, it is a critical and often critically lacking relationship skill. Hence, we end up with a bunch of passive-aggressive nice guys who let their resentment build until one last provocation releases an earthquake. We should not just try harder to be nice. You can only put the earthquake off for so long. This cannot be the right answer. You need to get to the roots of the problem. In order to do so, you may need to confront someone you care about. This is the difference between being nice and being good. A nice man is concerned with everyone maintaining smiling faces at all cost. A good man is willing shed his own tears and those of his beloved in order to redeem their relationship. This is not license to manipulate or the control the other person, nor is it a release from kindness. A good man is kind to those he loves, for he feels their pain as his own. Yet he is willing to endure that pain in order to make things right. A good man respects his beloved as a person, and he respects their right to disagree. He chooses to fight fair, because he cares more about the relationship than about winning. Nonetheless, the good man confronts an issue rather than pretending through smiling teeth that everything is okay.

There is, of course, a story to this. Well, two. There was a two page story about a sideshow to the C story. It didn’t make the final cut. Here is a shorter and more relevant tale. My relationship with my mother had been fairly strained until about a year ago. Eldridge writes in Wild at Heart about sons of controlling mothers. They tend to either push their mothers away or they end up weak and compliant. I was the former: taking risks, fiercely independent, unwilling to let her in for the well-reasoned fear that she would try to take control of my life. The nice choice is to say simple pleasantries to maintain the modicum of civility. But that is not the good choice. If she was unwilling to let go, I would have to keep pushing her away. Because of that, she seemed to believe that I did not want a relationship with her. In reality, I did truly desire a healthy relationship with her, she is a wonderfully kind woman who loves Christ. If she learned to let go, then I could trust her with the things of my life. If there were problems between her and I now, they would surely intensify when I got married. The classic Mother-in-law/wife conflict is a usually the result of a mother unwilling to let go. I wanted her to love my future spouse, not view her as competition, and in order to do so she would have to learn to let me go. There would never be an easier time to fix things between myself and my mom. So I prayed about it, and picked up the phone.

I read her a page from Wild at Heart. I told her that I truly desired a close relationship with her, but I could not enter into one until she learned to let go. I told her that I wanted to work with her for that relationship, and that I could not do all the work myself. And I told her about my future priorities. ‘Mom, I love you, but if you cannot let go of the need to control, you are going to force me to choose between my future wife and you. And if you do force me to make that choice, I will choose her.’ I told my mother that I wanted to work on my relationship with her now so that would be a choice that we would never have to face. And this was where our relationship started growing: she started learning to let go, and I started learning to trust her. A year or so later, my current relationship with my mom is better (and healthier) than it ever has been, all by the grace of God.

Here is the big thing, especially for men. If we never choose goodness over niceness, we will fail those who trust us with their hearts. This is doubly true for those hardier fights with those you love. Consider the Parents v. Wife classic conflict. A dear friend’s mom keeps offering him and his wife ‘suggestions’ on how they may want to run their home. Suggestions not as in ‘did you ever think about this’ one a month. More like suggestions about how to be a good wife, suggestions all the time, even when they’ve graciously told her ‘Thank you, but no.‘ She is a kind and Godly woman, not a manipulative woman, so I don’t think that she understands that she is undermining his wife’s role and the independence of their home. He gets caught in the middle. He chooses correctly, standing up to his mom and defending his wife. Good on him. Many guys don’t. Many guys wince at the prospect of their mother getting her feelings hurt, so they run away and allow their wife’s feelings to get hurt instead. After all, a your mother has her own husband to run to for comfort (your father, for all of you who are doing the math.) Where will your wife turn for comfort if you run? A nice man runs from conflict. A good man does not enjoy conflict, but he is willing to face it for those who he loves. This starts with some good kindergarten-style ‘standing up for yourself.’ If a man avoids confrontation with those who hurt him, he will likely avoid confrontation with those who hurt those who he loves. And he will fail them. I would rather fail to be nice than fail those who I love.

I thank God for growing me in this way. In confronting the wrong, we honor those who we love. In ignoring it, we drift farther and farther from being real in our relationships. Love them, but love them enough to tell them what is wrong. Work for reconciliation, if possible, but do not settle for the stability of a stalemate. This is the difference between being nice and being good. The nice man avoids a fight at all costs. The good man tells his beloved that ‘I would rather fight with the real you than have a truce with a caricature.’

I wrote this a few years back for a class. Gergen's, I think. Maybe it was Heifetz. Probably Heifetz, way more Jedi/ninja-esque. Anyways...

"This is a wicked generation. It asks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here." – Jesus (as told by Luke.)

To avoid our own troubling realities, we build monuments to those who conquered theirs. We look to the individual victories to avoid the much scarier reality of our nature, of all the things that humanity has never conquered within itself. Humanity still loves to appropriate rights for themselves that belong to others and put nice names on doing so. The only thing that has really changed is that we now have a broader vocabulary to do this with. We decry others' injustices past, but only injustices we can comfortably denounce, usually done by those who have come before us. We conveniently overlook our own leanings toward injustice, and we deliberately, although ostensibly subconsciously, overlook the convenient injustices our societies tolerate. Why? Because we want to pretend that we've changed, that we've gotten better.

Ignoring our own oppressions while lauding those who have conquered oppression in the past allows us the fiction that oppression has been defeated, and allows us the even more dangerous notion that whatever it is inside us that drives us to oppress is no more. Thus we stick our heads in the sand, and enjoy our conveniences and stolen liberties that by all rights belong to others. And we feel no guilt. Those who seek to wake us up from this hazy dream-world, those who seek to make us look beyond this façade we have constructed to the maelstrom of the real, we hate them. We hate their message because we like our lies. Humanity loves to tell itself that it seeks truth. It does not. It seeks power. It seeks control.

We are terrified of not being in charge of our own world. We have seen life's unfairness tear apart our dreams, and thus scarred, we vow to never let it happen again. We have been violated by those with whom we have been vulnerable, and we vow 'never again.' But actual reality does not afford us this vow. The only way we can ensure never being hurt is to control every variable in our world. We pretend that we can do this by gaining as much power and authority as possible, and by categorizing all beyond our power and control into little tiny boxes from which nothing can escape and hurt us. We have constructed fictional worlds where we can be safe, where we don't have to fear, even if that means we never get to live. We build our walls; we surround our small worlds with them so that nothing can hurt us. So that we are never, ever vulnerable. Because we are so very afraid. All of us.

Thus, when ever someone tries to drag us out of our little world into the real one, we react like a cornered, scared animal. We attack to preserve our security. We attack out of fear of being vulnerable again. And those who try, the prophets, we silence them. We who so laud our love of truth destroy truth when it makes us uncomfortable. Their death is a small price compared to our security and false invulnerability. So to Aristotle, hemlock; to Dr. King, a bullet; to Christ, a cross. And we remain safe until the next prophet comes. And we laud the prophets of old while we kill our own. Things don't change. We seek not truth, but power. Authority figures seek power. Leaders serve truth. We do not want to be leaders. We fear leaders. We hate leaders. And ultimately, we kill leaders. We fear and seek control. We are afraid of being led. So we set up figure heads we can control, which will allow us to lead ourselves. We, in turn, are only led by our fears. This is why we kill the prophets. We hate truth.

You glow with holy light your eyes blazing and radiant
You stand in brilliant garments and you offer me your hand
‘My love’ you breathe
Light like burning smoke like fire like lightning
Your arms your veins like lightning like mine
I touch your hand and our spirits mix
I understand you completely as never before
As you had understood yourself never before
In tears we embrace as I melt into you
I wonder how long you’ve been waiting
But I realize it doesn’t matter now
There is peace here
You have your sword no more
This is for forever

Moment turn to see it and twenty meet me head on
Look behind as many pass left and right
The stream of them i want to grasp one
I reach and grasp only air
I wish to hold them and understand each
They all have value and lessons
But there are too many i reach and it’s gone
I want to drink from this waterfall
Each drop its own but they are mixed in the stream
And i can only see them this way
I can only see the changes not the moments
I grasp at one and another and another
But they all flow too fast
And their stream mixes with another
And all is mixed and all is chaos
And there is order but i can’t see yet
I can’t see through it i can’t make the streams straight
But i won’t slow them down for this is my pace
And i won’t stop grasping and just let them flow by
And I’ll live

Sometimes I still hear them singing. // Sometimes I still hear the song.
The lightning still whispers to me. // The light still echoes between the stars.
The oceans, still churning, still teeming with life. // The galaxies, still spinning, still lost in the dance.
The cycles still turn in my blood. // The dance still turns in my spirit.
And I remember. // And I remember.
I remember my garden. // I remember the music.
The foundations of the Earth and everything above, // The expanse of the heavens and everything between,
Placed in my care. // Placed in my care.
The laws of nature, the tools in my hand. // The laws of the universe, the strings on my harp.
The garden grew, and blossomed, and flourished. // The song resounded throughout the universe.
And it was beautiful. // And it was beautiful.

But it went wrong. // But it went wrong.
By my hand. // By the hand of the fallen.
Then there was decay. // Then there was discord.
And the weeds grew, and the cycles ran down. // And the harmony failed, and the dance lost order.
And now I am back here. // And now I am back here.
The world is broken. // The song is broken.
So I now am a laborer. // So now I am a warrior.

I mourn for what has been lost. // I long for what has been lost.
I strain amidst the brokenness. // I fight amidst the brokenness.
I weep aloud for the decay. // I hate the sound of the discord.
But I remember a promise // But I remember a promise

That all things will be made new // That all things will be made new
That the world will be made whole // That the song will be made whole
And my garden will grow and blossom and flourish again // And the song will resound throughout the universe again
The cycles will be restored // The dance will be restored
And in wonder and amazement // And in wonder and amazement
We will join back in the song. // I will join back in the song.

(It looks better parsed... sorry. D.)

I saw hatred fly on stolen wings today.
The fires of hell unleashed on the innocent.
Shattering the morning.
I saw heroes wearing blue and red today.
Carrying the innocent to safety.
Their friends' lives above their own.
I heard the rush of angels' wings today.
Carrying the heroes to their home,
As a lone flag flew amidst the rubble.
I felt God cry today.
His eyes filled with sorrow and His wrists scarred
As the raindrops fell.
I heard a nation on its knees today.
Our prayers, the light of a thousand candles,
Burning as the fires among the smoldering debris.
I see justice flying on silver wings today.
The fiery trails of the angels in close formation
With the contrails of the fighters.
I'll see peace fly on a dove's wings one day.
When there will be no more death or pain.
When hatred will murder innocence
never again.

I lost a Rhodes Scholarship over this one five years ago. I admit, its not the best written thing in the world. I still like it. I don’t like rainy days and bad food, anyways.

You never know whether you truly believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. – C.S. Lewis

I believe that the truth of a person’s character is most truly expressed not through their hobbies, or their interests, or even in their accomplishments, but rather in what they are willing to live for and what they are willing to die for. Therefore, I would like to share what I live for, and what I will die for.

I am a warrior. A subject I have oft considered, given my choice of career, is freedom. A teaching from my faith that holds very true for me is that freedom requires the shedding of blood. I consider it an honor to be in a position where I may have to shed mine for the freedom of others. I would be in good company.

The concept of service is inextricably intertwined with this honor. By changing one word, the world is redefined. The traditional concept of power is the ability to make others serve you. When we view power as the ability to serve others, we glimpse true power. Unlike the traditional concept of power, which dissipates upon one's death, this power is consummated with the ending of a life lived for others. That done for others lives on. The epitome of this is to love those who hate you. This is where I find significance. This is what I will die for.

Something is terribly wrong with our world. We try to spread democracy across the world, but my generation does not care enough to practice it here. Our dismal voter turnout is but one symptom of a much greater problem. My generation has no hope. We have nothing to live for, much less something to die for. We live in Francis Schaeffer’s dialectic between the materialism of the ’50s and the rebellion of the ’60s, and find no meaning on either end of this spectrum. The consequences of this will be immense, for the center of this cannot hold. There has to be an answer. We have not found it yet.

We drown out the element of our being that screams ‘There must be more than this’ with our various self-destructive endeavors. We medicate ourselves with alcohol and drugs, we try to find meaning in empty physical relationships; we buy everything we can to make ourselves forget who we are. We crusade for the cause of the week, and end up disillusioned when this does not provide the meaning we so desperately need. When this doesn't work, we sink into nihilism and abject despair. We, as a generation, are living the first part of the journey of Aurelius Augustine. We seek meaning in many things that are not God, and meaning eludes us in all of them.

I believe that we, as a generation, will complete Saint Augustine's journey. We will find this hope that we so desperately need. Hope means much more to one who has never had it than to one who has always taken it for granted. When we find it, it will mean so much to us that we will be willing to do anything for this hope. We will finally have Someone to live for, and Someone to die for. And the world will not be the same.

Where do I fit into this? I do not know for certain. But I want to be ready. I am willing to give my life to bring this about. This is what I live for.

Energy is chaotic by nature. It is only useful when controlled. Gasoline can be converted to useful work powering an automobile only through an elaborate system of pistons and gears. Often, the more energy there is, the more mechanisms that are needed to direct it and make it useful. Such is the case with intellect. Such will be the case with us. We are learning now.

I want to see the world changed, to see my generation gain hope, and I will live in pursuit of these goals. I want to be ready when the opportunity presents itself to make a difference. This is the world as I see it. Soli Deo Gloria.

Some of the most unhappy people I know are rich. I am reminded by that ‘Tale of Two Cities’ tension, where the poor man desires all the trappings of wealth, whereas the wealthy man feels trapped by them and desires nothing more than to leave them behind. I imagine that fame is similar: it forces one to maintain a public persona, one whose value fluctuates like stock upon the whims of its fans and its investors. This is the same tension restated: the person must manage an image for mass consumption without allowing that image to consume them.

I remember a story of a couple who won the lottery. They were not well off, but they were making a living and were generally happy. So they buy a winning lottery ticket and they find all their financial woes instantly cured. At least for a week or so. They buy all the things they needed until they run out of needs. Then they buy all the things they wanted until they run out of wants. Left with nothing but whims, they end up buying most of those. Without having to work, they forgot how to. This was greatly unfortunate, for without the ability to work at things, the things in life they had previously enjoyed for free moved out of their price range. A divorce and countless broken friendships later, the once-couple both agreed that they would rather not have bought that ticket.

Becoming an empire is a lot like winning the lottery. Really, its pretty random. Countries and leaders try to figure out the trick, but it ends up being more about the right place at the right time. The Aztecs decide to built Tenochtitlan in the middle of a lake, which gives them the ability to raid their neighbors with impunity. As their neighbors decline, the Aztecs grow. Pretty soon, they are unstoppable (unless you have shiny armor.) The Malians end up living right smack in between two pretty big markets. One group makes a lot of gold, and needs a lot of salt. The other group makes a lot of salt, and would really like some gold. Build some roads, hire some customs agents, and viola! Big empire… at least for a while. The Etruscans are good at a couple of things, but they catch a couple of lucky breaks, not the least of these being the Alps. Hannibal decides to use elephants, you learn how to scare them into a panic, and pretty soon Carthage’s new crop is salt. Yachtsee, you run the board, and you get to run things for a while. Hooray, Pax Romana. But if one thing is true about empires, it is that they fall as just as surely as they rise. The empire gets all the cool toys, all the shiny things everyone else wants. So everyone else does everything they can to hasten the fall of the empire, hoping they will find some goodies in the debris. And in that collapse, the once-empire is left only with the parts of itself that never forgot who they really were.

America won that imperial lottery. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the most unlikely superpower found itself thrust onto the world stage. The isolationist power that had to be dragged kicking and screaming into both World Wars found itself front and center in an interminable Cold War. American economic and military power was the one roadblock in the way of Stalin’s armored divisions. The country that always came home when the war was over was not allowed to go home. And we changed, doubtless, not the least of these changes being a standing army, a novelty for a country of militias and citizen soldiers. Of course, you can’t have a military without a military-industrial complex, which increases the size and scope of government greatly. Cold wars are ultimately economic, so American foreign policy became inexorably linked with strategic resources. As a function of these policies, Americans began to become accustomed to the economic perks of empire. After forty years of war, the Soviet Union finally fell, largely due to a number of factors as random as those involved in its rise. America was the last man standing. But she did not come home. She had grown accustomed to the baubles of empire.

There was an America before the Pax Americana. Really, most of America was before the Pax Americana. When the Star Spangled Banner was written, the might of the British Navy threatened to quash the young republic. This hastily scribbled poem set to a drinking song is hardly a Rule Britannia, yet it is still our anthem. The Westward Expansion, so central to the formation of the American Psyche, went largely unnoticed by the powers of the day. The American Civil War was a largely irrelevant sideshow to the European Great Power wars of the 1800s. Yet, reenactors still return to the battlefields of Gettysburg and Antietam. The America that informs our historical narratives is distinctly bereft of imperial dreams.

What was this America before Superpowerdom? America was a last best hope. It was Ellis Island. America asked the world to ‘send me your wretched, your downcast,’ and gave them a chance. We were a City of Refuge, a land where you could start again. Certainly it was an imperfect hope. With immigrants being called Mick or Spic (depending on the century,) with other immigrants forced onto hellish slave ships against their will, with native peoples lied to, betrayed and murdered, we were a tragically flawed and fallen hope, but we were a hope nonetheless. And people came here. They came before we were wealthy, before we were powerful. They came before we had much to offer besides just hope. Hope has many flavors, though. Some hoped for political liberties. Some hoped to provide for their families. Some hoped for religious freedom. And they came, risking their lives across borders and seas. People came for that precious and rare commodity of hope. This is who we were, and when we choose to remember, it is who we are.

Any story of the ‘past that never was’ is simply nostalgia if it cannot address our current reality. The forces of history have propelled us into a position of empire, just as they did for the Aztecs and the Romans. We find ourselves thrust into a position we did not expect, one we may not have even been prepared for. We may not have pursued it, we may not have even desired it, but we are here nonetheless. Certainly our choices are imperfect, naïve, clumsy almost. But there are worse things than clumsy. Consider the European Hegemony of the 1800s. The Belgians collected heads and hands from their subjects in the Congo in order to crush revolts. I am not currently aware of any Civil Affairs plan for Afghanistan that incorporates that tactic. The French, who rail against the pervasiveness of American culture, obliterated cultures in their colonies by force in order to impose their own. No British flag planted in a colony ever had a timescale for withdrawal. I have a hard time imagining any American describing Iraq as ‘the crown jewel of America,’ as the British had described India.

Let’s widen our scope a bit, in terms of space and time. After all, we could argue that America and Europe were both different flavors of the same evil. Let’s see how the two-thirds world stacks up for imperial tenures. Aztec Empire: conquers surrounding peoples, takes goods as tribute, uses subjugated people as human sacrifices. Mongol Empire: conquers surrounding peoples, suffocates all leaders of conquered peoples, burns Kiev to the ground, killing almost all of its residents. Japanese Empire: conquers surrounding peoples, rapes Nanking, acts with tremendous cruelty to Korea. Empire of the Caliphs: conquers surrounding peoples, converts subjects from traditional religions by economic and military force, institutes slavery in al andaluz (Iberia.) American imperial conduct compares favorably to that of the Malian, Songhaian, Roman, Carthaginian, Mayan, Incan, Chinese, Macedonian, Persian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Nazi, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, or Soviet Empires. John Keegan (?) states that that there has been only one time in world history that one nation could have conquered the world through military force: the United States in 1990, after the fall of the Soviet Union. We could have run the board, and we chose not to. This is, of course, not the point. Even if the Pax Americana is benign in comparison to other empires, the dynamics of history are the same for all empires. We are trapped in historical inevitability… empires rise and fall. What history gives, it will just as easily take away. We must be careful not to give away too much of who we are in exchange for things we want. If we do not, we may find ourselves left with very little when the forces of history inexorably revoke their blessings.

We are still a last best hope. Colin Powell, arguably the archetypal American, tells how half of his family left Jamaica for the U.S., and the other half left for the U.K. Within a generation, the American half of the family boasted a C.E.O. of a major company, a four-star general and chief of staff of the entire American military, and several other notables. The British side of the family claimed an assistant railways conductor.
My friend Quyen fled Vietnam with her family as a young child. Her family had no home, yet found one here. I am the child of a policeman and a nurse, yet I have had the opportunity to attend a Service Academy and an Ivy League institution on full scholarship. These may not be typical stories, but they are impossible stories most other places. We are still a hope for a new life, still a hope to make the best of the life that you have. So we are a city of refuge, and there is always another group that needs refuge, always another group that comes seeking one of the flavors of hope that brought people here initially. Once the Irish, then Southern Europeans, then Eastern Europeans, then Asians, and now Latinos. The statue still reads ‘bring me your poor, your downcast.’ Not as a labor force, but as citizens. And they change us, just as we change them. Together, we constantly are becoming something new. Nearly all of our cultural symbols are appropriated from somewhere else and adapted, just like our people. This is who we are. This is why we are not a Western European country.

But we are in a tension. The Pax Americana tells us that we are an empire, and we should act accordingly. Somewhere deep, I think we still remember that we are the last best hope. The danger is in the fusion of the empire and the hope. The empire will eventually fall. I’m not the sure the hope has to. If we forget the hope amidst the baubles of empire, it will fall along with the empire. So what is our way forward? How do we stay who we are? Not through neo-isolationism. When you win the lottery, you don’t need to give back the jackpot. You just need to make sure you don’t forget who you are amidst the winnings.

Our tension comes to a head over the question of immigration. We are a nation of immigrants. Yet the INS in its current form exists more to keep people out than help them in. It certainly does not currently seem like America’s shores are waiting with arms wide open for the wretched of the earth. Yet the statue’s inscription in New York’s harbor has not changed. The birthright of an empire is prosperity. An empire should be hesitant, at best, to open its doors to the world. Every new citizen is one less share of the treasure for everyone else. The birthright of a city of refuge is hope. Such a place eagerly invites all comers, for there is always enough hope to go around.

On this one issue, at least, we cannot both be the empire and the last best hope. We must choose which of the two we really are. I just don’t see how the current Mexican immigration experience is so different from the Irish experience of a century ago. Irish people came to America because potatoes wouldn’t grow in Ireland. They came here for the hope of providing for their families, the same hope that pulls people across our borders now. If there hadn’t been an Ellis Island and Ireland had shared a border with Maine, I’m pretty sure there would have been a good number of redheaded people trudging through the snow on that border. Yes, people flew Mexican flags while marching in protests. Irish-Americans still wave Green, White and Orange flags more than 150 years later. The infrastructure and childcare jobs that Mexicans are currently willing to take were taken by the Irish upon their arrival here. So we are now faced with the same question that the Irish asked us a century and a half ago: will you let us in?

The way we answer will tell us how much we remember about who we really are. The imperial instinct tells us ’no.’ There’s not enough stuff to go around, and if you come here, it means less for me. But the Last Best Hope says ‘yes.’ We always have more hope, and we’d be glad to give you some and see what you can do with it. Between these two impulses, I recommend that we stake our future on the latter. Hope springs eternal. Imperial glory doesn’t.