This blog is continued with new posts over at
It's got comments and EVERYTHING. Whoo hoo!
At least that's what I hypothesized while trying to get him to figure out what he wanted out of life.
"Alexander, say you've got a week to live. What are you going do?"
"Um, I'll get out of here?"
"Yes," I answered and snapped my fingers, "You're out of prison."
"Well, I guess I'd ask God for forgiveness for my sins."
"Done and done. You're already forgiven. Don't waste any time asking for forgiveness. It's already been done, and your life was given back to you. You've got a week left. What do you do?"
Alexander looked at me like I had just said the most ridiculous thing ever. Look, he seemed to say, you tell me I have a week left, I tell you I want to be on my knees asking forgiveness for my sins - the best possible answer, mind you, and you throw it back in my face. What kind of chaplain are you anyway?
I'm the kind of chaplain who thinks that living on your knees is a waste, and besides it's hard on your knees. It's a sin against your knees, and God doesn't want that.
Alexander considered his fate for a moment.
"Um, I guess I'd be with my mother and father. They've been so good to me. I'd spend my last week with them."
"Ah, so with your last week of life on this earth, you'd be seeking more than love - you'd be seeking to love. You wouldn't be looking for amor, you'd be seeking to amar. Amen I say to you, brother."
We
talked about other things for a while. Alexander likes boxing and
Burger King bacon double hamburgers. In fact, he loves them so much he
has his parents sneak them to him during visitation. I got a real kick
out of that. We chatted about a fight he got into recently. Some older
bigger kid poured shampoo on his cot and threw his clothes in the
toilet. Just like high school, I remarked. Alexander got up in the
guy's face and got a couple of good licks in before the guards broke it
up. Alexander said it didn't matter anyway, because as he recounted to
me with pride, he was already going to the maximum security facility.
"So,
let's return to the question: What do you want out of life? What about
if I gave you 80 years. What would you do with your life? I give you a
million dollars and 80 years. What's next."
"Well, I um, I don't know."
"Let's just say that it's okay to buy bling, a nice house, have a beautiful girlfriend, a great music system, lots of parties, a pool, and beautiful view. You can get all that in a month. By my calculation, that leaves 79 years 11 month. Now what's next."
"I dunno, enjoy myself, pasarlo todo tranquilo."
"Alexander, how come when you have a week left you've got a clear idea of what you should be doing, but I give you 80 and you squander it?"
I reflect this week how easy it is to become a glutton. Give me more of it, I say, I want to live longer, better, and with more things. Do I realize what it's for.
I ask you, who stuff your faces at the banquet, for what do you want it?
Figure it out before you come back for seconds, please.
No American president has ever said this, and no American president ever will. Because I am impatient, I shall invent one who does. The following is transcribed from an actual fictitious president sometime in the distant future or past in a galaxy far far away.
My fellow Americans, I stand before you today, not as your president, not as the Commander in Chief, but as your dear friend, your best friend who really cares about you and must tell you something you do not want to hear. I will say it here today, because and only because I care deeply about America.
I stand here as someone who must remind us all today what it means to be American. If you will permit me into your living rooms, I shall speak my piece and take the consequences as they may befall me. I have kept quiet long enough. It is time that we heard the truth about what it means to be an American.
But first, let me dispel some myths.
It is NOT our language of English. It is not our culture, whatever that means. It not whiteness, blackness, latin-ness, chinese-ness, or any other -ness. We are not American because we drive big cars or trucks. We are not Americans because we love to buy. We are most certainly NOT American because we shop at Wal-mart. We are not American by virtue of keeping Mexicans from our shores, or waving the American flag, singing the national anthem, or pledging our allegiance. I could go on.
Do I need to go on?
The
things that make us American are the intangibles, not how we look, or
speak, nor what we have, acquire, or even what we build. What makes
us American, my fellow Americans, is the resolute fact that we have a
willingness to fail, that we have the opportunity to fail.
To be an American means to risk failure, and to fail not once, or twice, but repeatedly. Our failure rate, is directly proportional to our forward progress. Show me someone adverse to risk and I will show you someone who has done nothing, and will never do anything. He is happy, complacent, and content - content in his mediocrity. He is a useless sort, and we do not want him here in America.
Unfortunately, we
are beginning to grow more and more of these types right here on our
own shores. We are happy. We have lots of nice things. My fellow
Americans, I have nice things. You have nice things. We
enjoy a standard of living the far exceeds the majority of the world.
That is great and wonderful to be sure, but I see some slippage. We,
my fellow Americans, have become risk averse. We ask that others
assume the risk. When others come and are willing to risk death,
poverty, and discrimination, we malign them for they remind us of what
we have lost. It is our shame that causes us to call out to them, 'Go
home, you dirty immigrants,' for we have forgotten our proud dirty
immigrant past. Shame on us. Shame on me.
We shall not dishonor our ancestors in that fashion. I shall not dishonor my ancestors in that fashion.
We
Americans have lost the will to live, the hunger that made America
great. We have lost the willingness to put it all on the line.
What
does this American president propose? I will tell you. I want
immigrants that are fed up with tyranny, poverty, sickness, despots,
corruption, death and mayhem to pack their bags and get to America.
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free. Just get here.
And I do mean all of you. No quotas, no limits, no restrictions.
I want these immigrants to come to our shores, for the opportunity to earn a living, working hard, and gaining a purpose in this life. They are no longer cattle to be lead to a slaughter. They are to be no longer seen as simply the listless masses upon whom tin-pot dictators reap their blessings in the form of death, persecution, and abject poverty.
We Americans see you, people of the world, as human capital. Whereas others see you as drains on government pension funds, a lot to be taken care of or robbed or just a burden, we in America see your value. You are not a drain, you are an asset.
You are a national treasure.
And
we have forgotten it, my fellow Americans, we have forgotten to
treasure our immigrants. I ask, can a person have too much treasure?
Every life that wants to produce, that wants to be useful, because that is all any of us could ever ask, shall have that opportunity right here, right here in this great immigrant land of ours.
I can hear it now, my fellow Americans, 'They will bring down wages, they will subvert our way of life. We cannot absorb so many.'
Historically Americans believed that economic progress and prosperity were a result of the free land to our west. When things got tough, we opened up more land, and folks rolled up their sleeves, moved and worked that land to bring more riches to America. The fact of free land was a compelling reason for Americans to believe our nation was wealthy. I ask, however, what good is land without human hands to work it? Franklin D. Roosevelt once said:
We are not able to invite the immigration from Europe to share our endless plenty. We are now providing a drab living for our own people.
Which is, of course, a logical fallacy and begs the question, why
should we believe that immigrants come to share endless plenty. That
land could have lain bare for another thousand years without putting a
single cent in a bank account, happily. The immigrants were
the source of that plenty during the years of westward expansion, for
it was their hands that cultivated the soil, that shaped the landscape,
and caused it to yield untold riches. Immigrants come to create endless plenty.
It was immigrants, my fellow Americans. They were the riches.
Let me address the former criticism of wages. I hope immigrants do lower wages. Lower wages get people off their couches. Lower wages stimulate new thinking. If we have to compete with lower wages, we have got to think of ways to cut costs, innovate, or fail. That's the American way. And two, I ask, what IS the American way if its not to re-purpose international assets to our benefit. Let me paint a tiny picture of what I'm talking about.
Say, I am an African dictator and I am robbing my people blind. I am taxing what little they have to build myself palaces and buy cars and support my harems of women. I am a small-minded fool and shall soon be parted from my wealth.
Half my country then leaves. They take up residence
in America where that first generation works happily in menial labor
jobs and earns more in a day than they did in a whole month or year in
their country. Fast forward to their children's generation, educated,
hard working, and born of a spirit that there are so many
possibilities. These people will take us to scientific greatness.
They will build better cars. They will build better buildings. They
will become amazing educators, thinkers, business people, you name it.
They do not complain. They do not whine. They do not sue. They are
just thankful that they are not dying, starving in some nameless ditch
in some forgotten land. They wake up every day, thanking their god,
that they have had this opportunity. They revere their lives. They
revere our land. They revere their kind neighbors. This my friends,
is paradise, an immigrant paradise. All they need is a chance.
Meanwhile
our little African dictator takes a peek from afar, sees the riches
upon which he had sat and covered with excrement. It was, in fact, a
pile of gold, a pile of gold that far outstripped the production of
even his biggest gold and diamond mines. What was he thinking? A fool
he is.
And what should we be thinking. How can we NOT
absorb such riches. It is a windfall. It is a boon. We should dance
and sing and make merry for our good fortune. We seized half of a
country's riches and never had to fire a single bullet. Genghis Khan
would have been befuddled by such a brilliant scheme.
Is there ever too much good fortune?
So
come here. Come and bring to us your enthusiasm. We will give you a
chance to succeed. We will give you a chance to fail. But you can
pick yourself up and try something else. Because in America you make
your own destiny as you see it.
And, my fellow Americans, they are going to make us uncomfortable. Change is tough. They will challenge our ideas. I say then, we will get over it and we must stop whining. We must learn from them - learn how we used to be and start taking risks, thankful for every single day that we have in this great land of ours.
I thank you for listening, my fellow Americans.
I'd like to lay it all out here. Here it is in a nutshell, post
Easter. I've always been bugged by the whole scene in the Bible with
Tomas the apostle, the poster-child of doubt and lack of faith. I've
always thought he got a bum rap. My version would go like this:
"Dude, dude, we so totally saw Jesus today."
"What have you all been smoking. And for Christ's sake, take a bath, y'all smell."
"No, no, totally, Tom, we saw him, didn't we Peter?"
"Yeah. And the girls saw him too."
"Hmm, okay. Look, if it makes you feel better after having watched him be crucified and then locking yourselves in that room you call "the pad" for the last few weeks, that's cool. I'm glad you think you saw him or something."
"Aw, man, Tomas, thinks we're lyin'. He doesn't BELIEVE. He doesn't believe. He doesn't believe."
"Now you've got too far, my brothers. Look, whether he's actually walking around or not is totally and in all ways irrelevant. You all saw what he did. You KNOW what he stood for. He was the best. We lived and studied and hung with him through thick and thin. I KNOW who he is. He's right here. I don't need to see any bloody nail marks or spear wounds.
I looked deep in my heart and I realized that I know him. I know who he is. I don't need any more from him. What more could I ask.
You mistake my skepticism for lack of faith, but it's not that. It's that I don't really NEED anything more from him. He already gave us everything. He gave us purpose. He showed us the way. He died for us. I know that man believed what he said - what he told us. I know it. I know him. So don't you assholes with your, 'Oh, look Tomas doesn't believe what his eyes don't see,' selves give me crap and ask for the Messiah to go around on your little puppet stings dancing through magic fairy dust for you to feel good about yourselves. It is you who doubt. It is you who look for magic signs and voices from the heavens and burning bushes.
Now, if I
know Jesus, I know he just might oblige your puny minds with a heavy
sigh. 'Oh, okay one more time for Peter' and he'd wave his hand or
something, but after, he probably ask you why you couldn't be more like
Tomas. 'Tomas didn't make me do any miracles. Tomas didn't ask me to
rise from the dead. Y'all did, 'cause you needed it.'
Is it better to come upon a flower and to believe it was created for me, or to see the flower, know its blossom, and rejoice for I was there to see it.