What do we do today? Do
we pray for our country today? How do we
begin to resist this catastrophe? Perhaps we should start with acknowledging who we have been and where we are today.
I'll start with an admission. I'm not the praying type. But it's not like I haven't tried. Prayer, in common usage in English and in
our western monotheisms, implies begging for supernatural intervention. I have no such faith in a force beyond our human energies to direct our destiny. For me, the beauty of our humanity comes with our limitations and so with the possibilities we create to face the facts of mortal existence while we pursue what justice and civilization might offer as consolation. I am content to leave the rest to those who believe there is more than our humanity shared on the other side of their prayers. I'm resolved to stay in this world with all of our human foibles and our so too with our gifts. Humans can be far more than our selfish genes would prefer.
Now say what you will to soften that landing, but
we beg, we pray because we are at wits end, because our recourse to reason, however it may
also be at work, does not suffice. We’re
asking for help, for intervention, for something
to act with us or for us that can change the course of events. It's just true. We don't want all that life offers, so we formulate responses. We're certainly going to need our passions engaging the hope for change. In vision and idealism we create purpose, the motivation to action, the process of engagement that brings progress. But that process invites reflection first on what we have done. Pray, listen to that voice too.
To “pray” can simply mean to ask, though we know it usually means far more
than that. That’s one of
the ironies of hope too. What we want
may be beyond our control to manifest and the consequences are all too
real. But unless we ask for what we
want, how are we to know?
Now for a bit of genuine prosaic distraction, the kind that
provides the cerebral consolation fitting to those who can’t fathom supernatural
interventions, think it all a mere illusion (you know who you are), or whose
sanguinity is more earnest than mine. For
the inveterately hopeful, all true things are consolations. For those who failed Prayer 101 (and 201,
301, and the graduate courses too), we too need our consolation. (Nota bene: I managed not to fail some other classes.)
I would include President Obama in the category of the
genuinely prayerful. His farewell
admonition to continue in the hard word of citizenship resonates with his natural
buoyancy, which I have always admired and taken as a virtue I lack. To put the matter in terms more realpolitik, I would regard the
principal failure of the Obama years to be an underestimation of the malignant
determination and odious jobbery of his opposition. Nothing about the real work of citizenship
will change the hearts and minds of those for whom that work involves changes
they despise. The change we want is
precisely the change they oppose. Do you
think prayer is going to change that? Their work
is also to oppose ours and by any and
every means. Our sane recourse will
be to use their tactics. And at what
cost to our ideals?
What we face today is America’s shadow entering onto the
global stage of power with nothing between ourselves and that darkness but...us. So let’s go back to prayer for a moment, just
in case we believe hope or prayer will
deliver more. I will all of the intellectual
beguilement I can get just to make it through today.
Who knows how long people have been praying. I suspect the correct answer is since there
have been humans, the kind that realize we as individuals do not control our
fate. We’re always looking for that edge
that might just spare us the awful consequences. Turning wishes into actions only partially
suffices, which is another reason we pray. Turning to ourselves may be enough. That would be my prayer. You will likely arrive at your own too. Who among us does not want more than what is? So a few more words about "prayer" no matter what kind of prayer you are. (Skip this next part unless also you think it might be the only interesting piece of this essay.)
We arrive at “prayer” in English well after the Norman’s
change the language post-1066. I'm sure we were praying before that. The Old French
“preier” transmutes to a recognizable modern form “prier” around 900CE. Most words in French ---certainly to the chagrin
and likely rejection of today’s native speakers--- are re-pronunciations (one
might say more honestly mispronunciations) of earlier Latin. Isolated after the fall of Rome, the language
of the Franks took its own turn towards the exquisitely beautiful form we hear
today. But back to roots: the Latin root
“precari” means to beg, to make an earnest entreaty. The noun in Vulgar Latin is *precare, like
the Italian *pregare, and the origin is *prex, meaning “prayer, request.” The Proto-Indo-European root is *prek meaning
“to ask, to request, to entreat.” The PIE
mother source here leads another way to the Sanskrit praśna, meaning to question-- think of the famous Praśna Upanisad, which warranted
commentary from the great Śankarācārya.
There is also the Avestan frashna-
"question;" Old Church Slavonic prositi,
Lithuanian prasyti "to ask,
beg;" Old High German frahen, German fragen, Old English fricgan "to
ask" a question. Just in case you
were asking. Some of us pray, others of
us do etymology.
In addition to prayer, most religions also have canons. Canons are a form of the category “list”: we
make lists and call them “sacred” when we think they things on those lists are
somehow more valuable, more inviolate or meaningful than others that don’t make
the list. Genesis is apparently more
important than Maccabees. Your
call. Americans too need lists, canons
to remind us who we think we are. We
prefer document lists like the ones that begin, “We the People” or “When in the
course of human events.” Our documents
outline our ideals, fraught as they are with ironies if not with outright
fraud. After all, the demand for
self-government promising human rights and participation for all deliberately
excluded all but certain white men. We might
instead look to a list of dates for some other form of canonical reference, for
a way of gaining focus on our ideals with a more honest recognition of our
failures included.
How about this one:
December 7, 1941;
September 11, 2001;
April 14, 1865;
November 22, 1963.
April 4, 1968.
June 6, 1968.
January 20, 2017.
This list is likely familiar to any American but given the
current state of our civics education, you will forgive me if I doubt that too.
On each of these dates we grieve the catastrophe represented, recognize the
infamy of the event, and acknowledge that a "next" America evolved
from an historic moment. We might like
to say that Pearl Harbor’s infamy brought with it the defeat of fascism lest
we also be compelled to remember the treatment of Japanese Americans. We’re not innocents to any of our ideals, no
matter how noble the cause. Today we add
one more to this list.
Today "America" inaugurates a President set upon abandoning
the ideals of decency, reflection, fairness, wisdom, and inclusive government
for venality, indifference, chaos, and incompetence. Welcome to our next
America.
If I were the praying type this is what I would say:
Today I pray that the new President and his coterie are
merely incompetent rather than as malevolent as I believe them to be.
Today I pray that the American people will do what they have
not done on each of these days of infamy: rise to a new occasion of greatness
to live up to the ideals of our experiment in freedom.
Today I pray we are not witnessing the death of what might
have been: a great nation descending into ignorance and the incapacity to
distinguish between great leaders and cartoon dictators.
But the truth is, today I will not pray. Prayer, in our common usage in English and
our historical religions, is far too close to begging for supernatural
intervention. I prefer the Sanskrit related
term, praśna, or questioning. Like Congressman John Lewis, I question the
legitimacy of this Presidency, not only for it legality but more directly for
its moral indecency. The affront to our
collective ideals could not be more explicit.
From January 20, 2017 “America” will indeed carry on. But that "America" ---captured in quotation marks--- is all but virtual, a fictive ideal that has given way to a reality
that now brings joy to our adversaries and would make Orwell spin in his grave. That is, if dead could spin. Our principles of resistance are no different than they were in the original canon, so long as we recognize the canon of infamous dates as well. What we need is a more honest confrontation with our sordid past and a citizenry mature and serious enough to look at who we have been and what we want to become. Lord, hear our prayer.
The President of Hope and Change leaves us with all the
dignity and decency we recognized from the outset and that is cause enough to
grieve, as the day also a kind of death.
Much like the day the country lost Lincoln, King, and both Kennedys,
what we once had is now beyond our power to retrieve. The noteworthy claim is not the achievement of
Obama but the future that could have been and will not be. We do not start all over. There are no do-overs when the loss is real,
only consequences. That is what the
future portends. And dealing with those
consequences will be Obama’s work of citizenship with his leadership only
amidst the citizenry. Do I need remind
you We the People are not of the same work?
I mean to stand against this new government of venality
because our work of citizenship must acknowledge first that we, America, have
lost our way and may indeed not find the path we once imagined as our
idealistic beginning. We will need to
return to those noble and immortal words that meant to guide us to “a more
perfect union.” But unless we do it next
time with greater honesty and acknowledgement of the canon of dates, we should
expect no better result than the one we suffer today, January 20th,
2017. Another day of American infamy.
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