Dear Mr. President!

Dear Mr. President - 

Great party yesterday! I am proud to have you as my leader-in-chief. I do not agree with all of your choices, which is as it ought to be. The idea of “Yur either wit’ me or agin’ me” defeats the foundational strength of our democracy: desire for complete agreement is misplaced.

When we disagree and have the respect and regard for the good in each other we make our most profound movements forward as a people. To disagree with the idea of another while also affirming their good core enables you to be open to listen & compromise. Before you know it, we have a discussion grounded in reason and the common desire to make more good for more people. We become problem solvers who share a powerful core good.

This is the good stuff of what our democracy is all about.

I think we have lost our way. To loosely quote Brian Williams from NBC during yesterday’s inauguration, “If you have kids home from school today for the MLK holiday, get them in front of the TV. This is a chance to watch Americans behaving well, which we haven’t seen for some time.”

We are a nation divided, Mr. President, and not simply because we have different ideas about the role of government. We are divided because we do not rehearse, repeat and affirm that as human beings we all share a basic core good that will give us the power to make this nation and world a better place for all: with or without any religious affiliation.

• We do not regularly claim boldly and publically that inside every human is a core of good that we share together.
• We routinely do not assert this as a shared truth for those who disagree with us or who claim a different way, truth or path.
• We do not, then, take responsibility for our actions or lack of action.
• We relegate the prayed-for-goals of cooperation, compromise, tolerance, respect and regard to a blessing from a Divine Being who yesterday in the inauguration was described by you and many others as “God” who is a Male He, Him and Father.

The majority of you who stood at the impressive podium at the Capitol:

• Used God as the reason our nation is a place of freedom and possibility. “He” gave it to us.
• You also seemed to agree that the way in which humanity came to exist is through the decision-making process of God; the Father who birthed humanity. Hmmm.
• None of you made reference or tipped a hat to the reality that there are “fellow Americans” who choose with intellect and critical thinking, not to engage in a religious faith tradition. 
• Finally, the Benediction said it all.  A few lines is all that is needed to see the message delivered. It’s in the refrain:

 “We pray that you (God) will bless us with (God’s) presence because without it….

• hatred and arrogance will infect our hearts. But with your blessing we know that we can break down the walls that separate us.
• distrust, prejudice and rancor will rule our hearts. But with the blessing of your presence, we know that we can renew the ties of mutual regard which can best form our civic life.
• suspicion, despair, and fear of those different from us will be our rule of life. But with your blessing, we can see each other created in your image, a unit of God's grace, unprecedented, irrepeatable (sic) and irreplaceable.
•  we will see only what the eye can see. But with the blessing of your blessing we will see that we are created in your image, whether brown, black or white, male or female, first generation or immigrant American, or daughter of the American Revolution, gay or straight, rich or poor.

You get the point. Unless we have God’s divine blessing of God’s presence we humans are not going to be able to do anything good.

If God is not around, then we are going to be infected with hate and arrogance. We will mistrust each other and be filled with prejudice. We will be suspicious of each other while afraid of anyone who is different from us. We will only “see what the eye can see” – which I guess means the outside appearance of ones skin color, gender, sexual orientation and socio-economic status.

Wow. It’s a good thing God has been blessing us or we would be a nation that doesn’t listen to each other, that has absolute ideals about what is right and who is wrong, and gasp (!) would have various groups of people using God’s name for competing truths about who is actually created in “His” image or not.

This Benediction accomplishes two things at one time: It removes us mere humans from the responsibility of actually making a commitment to do those good things that build a good society and two; it rejects that all on our own we have the power to do it.  

I wonder who will Fact-Check this Benediction. Will we be watching to see if in fact God has blessed us? What will be the measure? If we pass immigration legislation that what?... allows illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship? Will that be evidence of God? If we overturn DOMA, does that mean God has finally decided (after all these years) to bless us?  What are we to conclude if DOMA stands, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, if women continue to be underpaid for equal work, if Black men continue to be the largest ethnic group to be locked up… what then? Can we boldly proclaim God has refused to bless us and then, “Oh well,” there’s nothing we can do because we humans don’t got what it takes to make it happen without God?”

I am profoundly sorry that among the beauty, pageantry and good tradition of the most powerfully good country, there was a distinct message that (a) we are a Christian Nation with a (b) Male Deity who has (c) chosen the U.S. to give Freedom and (d) without whom we as humans cannot make any moral shift to a higher ground of acceptance, equality or compromise.

Perhaps the most disconcerting facet to all of this is that most Americans don’t care. There will not be anyone following up on this Benediction or measuring if God is actually with us. That is, until a group of Americans do so with a vengeance of righteous validation for whatever their position is that purports the “real truth” of what it means to have God “bless our nation”.

It is a dangerous game we are all playing: invoking the Divine Being as the source of our life, freedom, wealth and all that is Good while ignoring the ramifications of what that actually means when segments of society do take is seriously.

Why not begin practicing that We Are Good? You and me, fellow Americans, fellow citizens, community peeps. We got the Good and all the powerful capacity to meet the demands of our future. With a religion or without one – all humans have the good to get it done.

Declare that We are Blessed with our own Good presence and insist that our Core Good show up so we can get this ball rollin!