And Now On to the Future:

Hope and Determination          

 


Harry T. Cook

By Harry T. Cook
12/26/14
 

The tree is dropping its needles. The presents and the wrapping papers have been packed off to where they belong. The solstice just past means that the days are edging on toward a later sunset. Our attention shifts now from the nostalgia that Christmas invites toward the new year with new problems, challenges and work to do.

 

My future at 75 is spelled this way: Alyssa, Cameron, Grace, Julien and Evelyn. These -- at 16, 16, 14, 13 and four months -- are my grandchildren. They and those of their generation are on my mind as I look out on the world for which my own generation and others before mine must accept responsibility.

 

No one at my level can do much about the mess in Syria or Iraq or Iran. I can do nothing to make Vladimir Putin put aside his Stalinesque ways. I cannot make China stop burning bituminous coal. I am powerless before the onslaught of the raging bulls of the incoming Congress, even as I fear what they may do or try to do. They may think themselves patriots, but if what they are saying comes from love of country, I'd be better off living in another one.

 

Based on what we know now, it is probable that my five grandchildren and their eventual children will live and move and have their being in a nation that will be more and more an economic oligarchy. Its elite think already that they are above the rest of us and therefore deserve their billions merely by the fact of their existence -- kind of like the divine right of kings.

 

My progenies' progeny will breath air that is not as unpolluted as I breathed at their age. They will inherit a world that will be warmer in all the wrong places -- that will be scorched when it should be rained upon, and rained upon when it should be dry, causing major environmental and societal problems. Unlike my two younger children who twice in their childhood saw the great ice fields of Glacier National Park, the grandchildren likely will not. The melt is on there with a vengeance.

 

Hope for a definite international agreement to reduce carbon emissions and to pursue renewable energy sources is fading -- or at best on hold -- even as the fracking business is a 24/7/365 affair and the infamous Keystone pipeline is about to be approved by the new Congress. This, too, I am powerless to prevent on behalf of my kids and their kids.

 

These younger ones know or eventually will learn about Ferguson, Staten Island and Trayvon Martin. When they digest those stories, surely they will wonder why my generation put up with it, why a half-century after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the dream he talked so much about has yet to be realized. In some ways, it has turned into a nightmare.

 

At the pace we're going, when the American grandchild contingent reaches adulthood, it will have found an undergraduate -- never mind a graduate -- education almost impossible to pay for absent a lot of parental aid. Even with such educational credentials, some may find it difficult to find a decent paying job. Those who wish to pursue the arts or give themselves to altruistic endeavor at some point may have to resort to food stamps for sustenance -- if such government aid has not been withdrawn due to the perceived need a) to cut taxes for the wealthy and b) to teach a Sunday school lesson to the famed 47% about pulling themselves up by the straps of boots they may not have.

 

And must my grandchildren be citizens of a country that tortures people to obtain information, of a country that uses drones to bomb other nations into submission, of a country that seems to preach profit �ber alles, of a country that seems satisfied with substandard education and inadequate care of the mentally ill, of a country that fills up its prisons with scarcely an attempt at rehabilitation, of a country that lets it infrastructure go to hell? Unacceptable!

 

As one of their antecedents among many, I cannot let being almost 76 years old hold me back from advocating and working for the realization of the more perfect union about which our Constitution speaks.

 

Franklin D. Roosevelt had it right 70 years ago when in an address to Congress he proposed a "Second Bill of Rights" that included:

  • The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
  • The right of every family to a decent home;
  • The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
  • The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; and
  • The right to a good education.

Some of that vision has been fulfilled, thanks in great part to Roosevelt himself and to the 36th president of the United States, the late Lyndon Baines Johnson, who gave the nation Medicare. Long may it live. Much, as is evident, is left to be done.

 

So, grandchildren of mine: Speramus meliora. When you study Latin, which I hope you will, you'll learn that the phrase means "we hope for better things." For now, you do the hoping and count on us gray heads to work for them on your behalf. Soon enough, you will attain adulthood. When you do, take up the task in our place and make the best of it. For your kids and theirs.


Copyright 2014 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
 


Readers Write
Re essay of 12/19/14 What If It Were All True?
 
 
Per Lundblad, Calle J�r F�lla, Sweden:  
The strong story of the singing of silent night at the battlefield I have used many times in my sermons as minister in church of Sweden. It is indeed very strong just as it is . Easy to be moved by. I like your writings which I like very much. I am nearly a heretic myself.

Stanley Beattie, Farmington Hills, Michigan:

The faithful daily pray: "Dona nobis pacem." The passage of another millennium, and maybe more will realize nobody is listening.  Or doesn't care at all. Freedom From Religion Foundation explains, "Nothing fails like prayer." Robert Ingersoll said, "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray."

 

Cynthia Chase, Laurel, Maryland:  
It is true enough. Would/could say more but belatedly doing cards -- signing them, writing notes on them, etc. The shepherds made me do it.

Donald Worrell, Troy, Michigan:
One of your finest essays of the year.

 

Fred Fenton, Concord, California: 
The "what ifs" of history sadden the heart. "The hopes and fears of all the years" are left in the hands of men like Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld who never experienced military combat and members of Congress who refuse reason, the lessons of history, and the dictates of conscience.

Morris Fairchild, Aurora, Colorado:

So evocative your essay today. It helps me to celebrate Christmas without having to be compelled to confess literal belief in things like virgins and mangers. I can't imagine having the same feelings if I lived in the Southern Hemisphere where summer now reigns. Thanks for your wonderful prose.

 

Bette Fischer, Bexley, Ohio:

As far as I am concerned, you would be welcome to come to my church and give your essay today as the sermon at the midnight Christmas Eve service. It brought tears to my eyes. I think you have the Christmas spirit as well as any agnostic secular humanist can.

 

Gail Graham-Bonner, Regina, Saskatchewan:

Your essay about wishing the Christmas story were true as told touched me deeply. Christmas is nostalgia and memory time for me. Like you, I can't get the angels and the shepherds out of my head even though I am sure they are fiction. But it's poetry, as you have pointed out previously. I love the Latin, too, though I don't know enough of it. Merry Christmas!

 

Mark Bendure, Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan: 
Another excellent essay.  My wife hosted an event where the speaker told of a similar cessation of hostilities in World War II on Christmas Eve where the troops laid down their arms and changed the form of competition to a soccer game, only to resume trying to kill each other a day or two later. At our Unitarian-Universalist Church, there is a Christmas Eve service, usually devoted to something like the message of peace rather than biblical dogma which ends with the lights out and the participants holding candles singing Silent Night. I imagine being in a war-ravaged area, the electricity having been bombed into oblivion, humbly meeting with like-minded people singing songs that carry the hope of "heavenly peace" and "peace on earth, good will toward men" and the possibility of a brighter future borne by new life.  It is in that symbolic sense, not a doctrinal sense, that I continue to be moved by the message of Christmas and songs of the time, particularly the Simon and Garfunkel "Silent Night/7 O'clock News" work that I listen to every Christmas Eve as a reminder of how far we have to go to reach the state of peace promised in Christmas lore.

Richard M. Schrader, Jacksonville, Florida:

Your essay on hope was one of your finest. Hope coupled with good works such as lifting the sanctions toward Cuba may spark the Christmas spirit to life throughout the world.

 

Robert Causley, Roseville, Michigan:

What if?What if we asked our government: "Why are you developing and delivering weapons instead of plows? What if we asked for a full accounting of our tax dollars? What if we ask our local, state, and federal elected representatives to work together? Would those questions ever be answered or acted upon! Keep up the ringing of the bells and attempts at enlightenment. Maybe someday there WILL be enlightenment.

 

What do you think?
I'd like to hear from you. E-mail your comments to me at [email protected].