A Good Thrashing

Yesterday Madpriest left this comment on my post "This Just In..."

Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!
Stop being so greedy about "the pain"
Do you know how dangerous this world is because Americans cannot see beyond their own pain?

Yikes. Aside from feeling like the puppy that piddled on the good rug, I had to admit (immediately) that the man (whom I admire tremendously) has a point. The world is, according to the Ship of Fools, at a 68.8 percent chance of rapture, thanks in no small part to US policies and-- there's no other way to put it-- our heavy hand around the globe.

After I got my tail out from between my legs I began to muse in a 12-step mode about the whole thing. Because, clearly, the land I love and call home, has an addiction-- it is addicted to power, to military might, to weaponry, to oil and to riches. It is also addicted to a slim view of scripture and salvation that would, I truly believe, be unrecognizable to Jesus.

What to do? The first step to recovery is the admission of powerlessness. I admit that am powerless over my drug of choice. Can you imagine the US consciousness ever being able to say "I am powerless over..." anything? It is almost the definition of everything reviled by those in charge (and I am making no claims based on partisanship. I watched as key senators made themselves absent so that they wouldn't have to vote on the non-binding resolution against the war in Iraq. How disappointing that was...).

I listened to a National Public Radio report this morning on the bloody civil war in Sri Lanka. The report focused on a family who had lost their father. Ho hum, right? Everybody's losing fathers and brothers and mothers and sisters and lovers these days, right? Oh, God, forgive our self-absorption. No, never mind that, heal it. Madpriest is right. We US-ans don't corner the market on pain. We just shatter the globe with our attempts to medicate ourselves back into thinking we have power over something.