What to Hang for Christmas?

I am hanging hope for Christmas, once again this year, not because I'm brimming over with enthusiasm for the run up to the 2012 national elections which began last month the day after the mid-term elections. It's because of my conviction that this world belongs, as it always has, to the God who created it. What else can one cling to after the first decade of the 21st century which began with 9/11 and moved immediately into two wars, a worldwide recession and still growing tensions between the partisans of Islam, most of which are stuck in the 13th century, and the West. One has to go back to WW II to find a world more messed up and confused. We're showing increased signs of weariness, stagnation and corruption after a tumultuous century of conflict and financial stress, but I'm still not going to hang black crape.



Life expectancy has increased, thanks to vastly improved nutrition, sanitation and health care. Stunning scientific achievements have been made, long with clear progress on human rights. Democracy triumphed over deadly challenges from fascism and communism, but only at horrific cost, and so it goes, two steps forward, one step backwards, if we're lucky. There will be no breather in which we can revitalize ourselves. Indeed, there is now solid evidence that our system of governance needs major tweeking to improve effectiveness and that our laissez -faire, free market economy has developed some serious problems. As anyone who has read previous blogs knows, I have no confidence in Wall Street moguls and most of the nation's business leaders. Greed has triumphed in America and most of them will do whatever it takes to generate ever larger profits and personal gain, regardless of their heritage, education and privileged position. They must be regulated wisely and sooner or later they will be.

Yet, underneath it all, there is the intrinsic goodness of the American people. We are a goodhearted, god -fearing , hard working people who have fine traditions and a solid underpinning. Our recent Thanksgiving holiday reminded me of the atmosphere on the ground of a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, or a city wide blackout or even a national tragedy. The people are kind, the cops good humored , the spirit palpable. Many years ago, during the first terrible Ethiopian famine, I was raising money by phone for UNICEF and I encountered this unique American spirit in talking to people all over the country, as TV images of vultures hungrily eying emaciated babies on the verge of starvation, spread by time zone from east to west. People gave with enormous generosity, reducing me to tears with comments like "Here's $25. and I think my husband has $30. left on his Visa" or "Would you take $5? I'm very ill, but I can go without a meal without killing myself." As I looked around the crowded phone bank room, I saw many workers wiping their eyes. That's why I'm not hanging crape this year. Never conquered America is still strong enough to survive and revitalize our failed institutions (the church, the markets, the Congress, etc.) and our ineffective, self -aggrandizing leaders. Furthermore, every 12 hours we get a real time image of the glory of our planet and the work of His hands.