God Bless America

I love America.

That's easy to do, since there are so many things to love about the United States of America.

First and foremost I admire America's belief in progress. Just because something is bad now, doesn't mean it will stay bad forever; things can be changed, for the better. Not changed, as in eliminated, or replaced, which is the usual result of most revolutions. America's revolution was to keep, to conserve, the good things they felt they had achieved, and to add to them. To "plus" themselves.

I love Americans (and one in particular: my American wife!). They are optimists. They are creators, they do things, build things. They add to what's already been built. They "plus" our world.

I have faith in America. America is the living example of what faith means: to hold an idea in your imagination, and work to bring it to light. The labor that goes into this act of creation requires some of the strongest brand of courage there is: the courage to admit you're wrong. If what you're building isn't what you were aiming for, you need to be able to see the difference. Otherwise you build a prison rather than a paradise, poison instead of medicine. Few are those with the bravery to dis-illusion themselves as they labor, to strip away fantasy, and bathe themselves with doubts, in order to obtain a clean version of reality. Safer to never question, to never re-think, to never test our faith... safest of all, is to never try to create anything.

As children, every youngster loves to paint, to sing, to draw... and does so, with little inhibition; yet most youngsters reach an age when they learn to see that their graceless stumbling isn't really elegant dancing, their scribbles aren't really great art. And they stop being creative, they put away paint and flute and ballerina slippers. "I'm not really very good now", they say, "that means that I'll never be good... so why go on trying..?" They lose their faith, confusing the short-term present with the long-term future... with eternity.

In their own way, Americans continue trying. They never abandon their faith in themselves, they persevere in their belief they will forever succeed in getting closer to the ideal they hold in their mind's eye, however long it takes. Their country, after all, was built on faith, the faith that their people will continue to become better Americans, and better able to keep re-creating the successes of those who came and "plussed" things before them.

America is a country so full of heroes, a word which to me means, "someone who does what they are supposed to do." A couple of Christmas' ago, I made a short video to express my gratitude for the example that Americans set, generation after generation, in showing just how much goodness there can be, in living life as a human being, created in God's image: as beings capable of imagining better things, and working to bring them to light.






From the macro, to the micro: a video I was lucky enough to find, of a gentleman who, for me, is a typical American: someone who believes in "plussing" their world, and acts on that belief:




May God continue to Bless America.