The 'Junk' of a Nation

Of all the sights and monuments there are to see in Washington DC, I was particularly excited about the Smithsonian Museum of American History only to find that it was closed for refurbishment until 2008. Fortunately, a small selection of its artifacts were on display at the Air and Space Museum.  So, I dragged my friend Ronan along to the small collection of about 150 pieces.  Although small, the exhibit was wide-ranging, with pieces as diverse as Abraham Lincoln's hat, an original box of Crayola crayons, the Greensboro luncheon counter, and the laptop used by Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City. Throughout the exhibit there were audible and excited exclamations: 'Oh, look it's...'; 'Wow, do you remember...?; 'I've seen lots of pictures of it, but seeing it for real is completely different.' One woman stood by her daughter explaining the courage of the suffragettes as they looked at a pin commemorating those who had been imprisoned in the campaign for women's right to vote. Another had a good laugh as she and her friend spotted Minnie Pearl's hat, remembering the comedienne's antics.  One man was fascinated by the imposing stature of George Washington and the diminutive frame of Andrew Jackson, each evidenced by their respective military coats on display.

For my UK readers all this may make little sense.  For Ronan, while admitting there were some interesting items, others seemed to him just pieces of junk.  In one sense, I agreed.  The exhibit felt like going through the nation's attic, and to an extent the stuff was junk: Archie Bunker's tatty old chair, a pair of old (albeit original) Levi 501's, the stump of a tree riddled with bullets from a Civil War battle.  However, it is the junk that defines a people.  It is artifacts such as these that connect Americans to each other, and which witness to our collective experience as a people. Whatever our individual feelings may be about the current and the coming Presidents, we all reverence the first one as 'Father of the Country'.  We know about his honesty in admitting to chopping down the cherry tree and his courage in crossing the Delaware River.  Looking at the desk on which Thomas Jefferson composed the Declaration of Independence, there is hardly an American who cannot recite 'we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'  We also know how those words resounded down through the our history on the lips of heroes like Lincoln and King. This little desk is not just a piece of 18th century furniture, but a symbol of what we believe ourselves to be at our best.   The script from MGM's The Wizard of Oz and Dorothy's ruby slippers are not just movie memorabilia, but symbols for Americans of what it means to dream and what it means to find home.  As such, they reference an experience which, since the film debuted, no American has escaped. All this 'junk' — through a collective history in our schools, but also through our recreation, films, music and television — have given us our national identity.

As Britain struggles with the idea of a national identity it would behove her to remember that she cannot create one out of thin air, and that a national identity once disdained is almost impossible to recover.  A real national identity arises from the little things of communal experience that reveal to us not only what we value, but also remind us of what we most should strive for by recalling our founding narrative and principles.  I know that I will most likely never see the people at that exhibit again, but also know that I am connected to them through a common story, and that is what a national identity means.

Risky Business

For the first time here, I want to write about a gospel story. Last Sunday's gospel reading was the temptation of Christ in the desert, and it is one my favourite stories.  It is, on account of its incredible psychological depth and insight.  The 'accuser' (Satan) tempts Christ with the archetypal challenges which being human presents.  'You are hungry.  Make stones into bread.'  That is, fill yourself with that which doesn't really satisfy; for immediate gratification.  'Everything is yours if you will worship me.'  That is, sell out and get everything you ever (thought) you wanted. However, recently the one that has been most interesting to me is the second one:  'throw yourself down from the height of the Temple; God surely will save you.'  That is, you are special, you are protected, you are indestructible;  death does not apply to you.  For human beings in general, I think that this particular temptation is really about our unwillingness to face our mortality. Working with young people, I have realised that this has another dimension that applies particularly to the young - their sense that the normal rules of risk do not apply to them; and many have willingly admitted to me that they regularly take risks they know to be dangerous because they don't believe anything terrible will really happen to them.

Most of them will undoubtedly grow out of that phase.  But, I am left wondering if the reverse is any better - to take no risks at all. Unfortunately, that is the place many of us end up in as we get older.  I recently saw the movie The Princess Diaries, and in it the heroine's dead father leaves her a powerful verbal legacy:  'Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something is more important  than fear. The brave may not live for ever, but the cautious do not live at all.'  Life without risk is not really living;  and so both young and old are captured by the same question, seen from different ends of the spectrum:  the discerning of what is worthy of risk. For Jesus, throwing himself off the pinnacle of Temple for a dare wasn't; but, throwing over the tables of the moneychangers and sellers in the Temple was.

In my first blog entry I mentioned that I might just pose more questions than offer answers.  Well, here is the first truly open-ended piece.  Each person has to negotiate the level of risk with which she or he is willing to live.  Each person has to navigate for him or her self a personal path between recklessness and stagnation.

Taking the 'Shame & Blame of it'

Pictured here on the left is one of a series of murals which adorns the House of Representatives in the Massachusetts State House. The series is called 'Milestones on the Road to Freedom in Massachusetts'. This one particularly, is called 'The Dawn of Tolerance in Massachusetts: Public Repentance of Judge Samuel Sewall for His Action in the Witchcraft Trials.'  The title refers, of course, to the Salem witchcraft trials which took place in colonial Massachusetts in the last decade of the 17th century.  Of all the Judges involved, only Samuel Sewall made public apology without qualification. Others certainly took responsibility and expressed regret; but only Judge Sewall publicly took the  'Blame & Shame of it' without offering explanation of extenuating circumstances.  In short, he simply apologised.  

In the latest biography of Sewall, Judge Sewall's Apology, Richard Francis writes that 'for all of us, it's difficult to say we're sorry. An apology means repudiating an aspect of our past selves; in a way it's like a suicide.'  I could not agree more.  An apology is a kind of death; a death not only to some aspect of our past selves, but also to the images of our constructed selves which we project to those around us and which we work so hard to maintain almost at any cost. Apologising is so difficult for human beings, that we hardly ever do it.  There may be the passing almost conditioned, 'sorry'; or there may be the more seemingly heartfelt apology which is then followed very quickly with some reason, some mitigating circumstance, which we use to explain our actions and thereby diminish our responsibility.  However, real apologies are rare. Our instinctive unwillingness to really offer apology, coupled with a particular brand of social determinism prevalent today - 'there is a reason beyond my control for my actions' - makes genuine apology in our society even more elusive.

Ultimately, apology is about seeing ourselves for who we really are and taking responsibility. It is about admitting that the actions I take or have taken are mine and mine alone.  A genuine apology offers no extenuating circumstances, not even 'it seemed to me the right thing to do at that time.'  It says simply, 'I'm sorry.'  For the most part, any qualification beyond an apology seems a way of saying, 'but it wasn't really my fault because.....'  These observations may appear harsh, but it can't be denied that it is this kind of unequivocal apology that gains from us the greatest admiration, namely because of its unadorned integrity  After all, no murals commemorate the 'apologies' of the other Salem witch trial judges.