LIGHT AND SALT: DIMENSIONS OF REALITY
By Jim Williams
March 24, 2009
As I listened to my pastor’s sermon Sunday on the topic of light and salt in a world that has lost both, I listened with heavy heart but with open mind as I weighed the implications of that loss on the scales of our future as a People in a global village. As the pondering of the weight has only grown heavier as the hours have made their way to the key board this morning, as the eternal optimist, this sense of confliction permeates my mind as I think of the minds in my classrooms and the emptiness of hope that pervades the prison cells of the countless thousands I have spoken to and ministered to in word and song.
Seemingly with each passing day, CNN reports on a new low in human history be it debt, scandal, morality gone awry, families torn asunder and this thing called “global leadership” being redefined in new colors and hues we have not seen before in this lifetime. We hear the names like Bear, Lehman, AIG, the Fed, Treasury, Geithner, Obama, Bernanke; all strange sounding, distant and rings in every corner of our lives today thinking simply; where does this all end up? How does this story end? It is America so I know it will be okay, tomorrow, right?
The Bible speaks of a city on a hilltop cannot be hidden from view. Reagan used that descriptor to rally America, to make us proud to be Americans so where are the Reagan’s’ of the world that can lift us, make us believe the boogie man really is akin to the tooth fairy and not the wolf at the door that is huffing and puffing to blow our house down? In the sermon, I was reminded that light engages and chases the dark away and salt, once it has lost its saltiness, is, well, worthless. It cannot be regenerated but must be replaced with freshly mined salt from Earth’s pits of regeneration. So the question simply is, have we, America, lost our light and thus our way and has our saltiness been now rendered to road grit on a snowy day?
“Me thinks not! “ Mr. Shakespeare would have uttered and in that utterance rest the cymbals of change clanging loudly and proudly to the call. I am so sick of the sickly, powerless pagans of doom and gloom we are allowing to pervade our lives in far too many ways daily. Yes, our national prestige is blighted and frankly, needed to be blighted I believe, now. We have become a nation spoiled with a GDP per capita easily $10,000 too high for that is about the spread of debt hold us above our true sustainable standard of living. We are witnessing the engorging tendency of entitlement programs and mentality forge a generation or two of people that do not see the real need to learn, to actually have to work to survive and enjoy the fruits of that work. All great empires have imploded internally and not exploded from external and the pressure of government paid cradle-to-grave mindset is exactly what we are living through so where is the clamor, the outrage, and the absolute mandate to stop this craziness before it is too late? I tell you where it is for it rests in the hunkered down hulks of our elected leaders that we place our dependence to vote the conscience of the nation; our desires as a People. But what we have allowed to be birthed are very intelligent man and women we send to Washington to be prostituted by lobbyists, political meandering toward the pork barrels of stronger, more tenured politicians with the caveat that if you support this one, I will support one for you one day!
We are America! We are the light on the hill! We are the place the peoples of the world still yearn to come to learn, to live, to raise families. We are the salt but we are acting truly like sheep with no hooves slipping and sliding on the rocks of fear and doubt fueled by blind belief and allegiance to men assuming they are smarter than we are but in fact, become sucked too often into the jet engines that become “bird hits” instead of people of stature and courage. In some of my daily missives, I speak about Paul Volcker. Here is a man of proven courage and backbone and supposedly in the Administration’s Economic Advisory Committee but for all intents and purposes he has surely died and we have just misplaced the obituary.
The very term of “bail out” has now become a term of “well, okay I understand ...” instead of a term that brings the vomit sensation to an American must like the term “bankruptcy” used to. We now view bankruptcy as not the person’s faulty but the fault of a System. Hogwash for let us not forget that the sin of personal greed rests at the core of how now whole global disaster. I watched “60 minutes” last night in a great program of breaking down the debacle into its pieces. What I saw and listened to were three Americans that made very poor decisions about mortgages and with all sincerity feel like it is not their fault but the fault of the System, the lenders, the boogie man. So it is “not my fault” is the new slogan instead of “Made in America,” it seems to me.
Nobody is to blame for everybody is to blame. Nobody is accountable for everybody is accountable. Having grown up in a world of tire manufacturing meaning by definition to drive cost down EVERYDAY you made a tire, it was all founded upon the principle of accountability. I cannot recall through this whole fiasco having a sense that anybody really is a fault nor accountable. Accountability carries a price to be paid like public humiliation, hangings, you know, “Godfather-type” accountability. But there is none. I am amazed at the snake charmer sensation I am witnessing with the words, the charmer’s instrument, of our new President. I am flabbergasted at the slithering nature of the key monetary leaders in the new Administration. Where are the leaders? A Leader is the one that when the world is crashing makes you want to get a shovel and go assist with the clearing up of the damage waiting that that sure sunrise in a few hours. So, where are the leaders!
I think the leaders, the transformational kind we need so badly, are in a death camp somewhere for they must be for I see none. Perhaps the leaders are Putin or Chavez or Ahmadinejad or the right tackle on the New York Giants, or, wait, I know, it has to be LeBron James; yes, that’s it. I now have it! How silly that sentence is I know but it captures the apparent mindset of a great nation seemingly castrated by the greed and the debt load that is mountainous to the point we have lost sensitivity to the implication of it enormity.
For the record, I am ready for some fresh salt and a new candle to light the way as we learn from the Bible. We, as a nation, have been in dire straits before but I cannot recall in my lifetime the sense of helplessness and impotency I am witnessing. I am sick of the Pelosi’s and the Reid’s of the world. I am totally not enthralled with what I see of the new national leadership even though I realize it to be less that the magical one hundred days. My career has shown me that unions add cost to goods and services so when I see the tsunami of organized labor billions going to the politicos to rush through the Employee Freedom of Choice Act, a moniker for the unions to have free reigns in organizing efforts in a time when that is exactly what this country does not need; I simply want to shudder with the implications.
Understand me well for I am not angry but I am extremely burdened by so many massive forces at confluence. I know great leaders can manage a portfolio of forces but my concern is that I see none of the forces being truly grasped, decision made, energy forward exerted but rather I hear sound bytes, talk shows, the bully pulpits of the Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh’s of the world. The problem I have with all the hoopla of Limbaugh’s telecast on CNN is that I realized I did not have a problem with anything he was putting on the table for the buffet. Big government never has been and never will be the answer or the fix for a troubled economy. Big government is “pendulated” meaning they overkill in one direction of the swing or the other never hitting the sweet spot; that is what Free Markets do is to provide the sweet spot.
My confidence in the Free Market is unchanged for I have seen much of this world not blessed to be part of such an economic. When, in 2009, I hear so much rhetoric about “socialism” and the fix for all the ills it to pushing the rich for they are the real enemy; hum, I simply cringe. America is the world’s city on the hill and it is incumbent on us to find the right pathway to the salt mine to replenish our tarnished saltiness. I do believe America is our own worst enemy. I also believe America has put herself into a period of pain of lack of accountability for many ethical, moral and economic wrongdoings. I believe America has desensitized from that which has made us a great nation. Yes, I believe we are living through what America deserves for we have lost our moral footing on the slopes of greed and corruption that is the down side of capitalism.
Like the three in 60 Minutes last night said about the millions of dollars of mortgage they secure with all three combined having an annual income of less than $200,000, “well, it is simply not my fault!” YES, IT IS YOUR FAULT and it is our fault for not doing, being and living to the standards we know to be right, fair and equitable. Our economic system is founding on risk for that is the centerpiece of entrepreneurship. The government is now bent on making the system risk-averse so with that averseness you will see no willingness to try new ideas, stay hunkered down waiting on the “State” to make the boogie man go away. I watched Poles in Poland struggle with the realities of two generations of the State making all the decision but then faced with having to take risks of livelihoods and capital decisions shiver in fear for the State was no more. But once that warm sun shines upon new ideas, pay backs, growth and prosperity, the desire to take on additional risks with even new ideas is ushered in. America needs the usher to lead us and I am not seeing any of those currently.
Seek the light and yearn for the savor of the salt for people will always follow the light. People only fear that which they do not understanding so light, as it permeates darkness to nothingness so is the challenge for America. We must stop being fearful and show strength as David did with Goliath when the world is shivering in the cold dampness of fear. Dictators of the world love this side of Americanism; that you can know and that knowledge irks me beyond measure.
As for me, I am an American, a man, a Christian and a leader; on those four you can stamp MADE IN AMERICA proudly. Who will join me?
No comments:
Post a Comment