Down the Rabbit-hole

When I stand back and look at my life, comparing how it all was, say in 1952 when I was 12, and now when I am 79, it definitely feels like I am down Alice's rabbit hole.

Once upon a time the teachings of Jesus and Hebrew prophets were revered, and they were known and spoken of as the backbone, the inspiration for our freedoms. They inspired the founders of this great experiment, our Republic. Sure it is flawed and evolving, yet unique in history. It created a place where people could rise from whatever circumstances to wherever hard work and vision could take them. It created a place where there was less poverty and misery than ever before. Because of all that and more, patriotism was alive and well.

The decline in Christianity seems to be in step with our overall decline. My heart weeps.

Today it is fashionable to degrade all that we historically and recently held dear and turn away to promote socialism in a fascist color. Free speech is called hate speech if it is not in agreement with the shouting and ignorant mobs. History is not taught accurately, but has become more like propaganda. What happens to socialist countries is ignored, say Venezuela. What is called for is pretty much like communism in the manor of the old Soviet Union. Because history is distorted, I assume the glowing supporters have never learned what really happened there. As they cry to take away guns, they seem to not know that was one of the early steps of the Nazis.

Then there is the mass murder of our babies. Life is apparently no longer sacred. Since Roe vs Wade, over 60 million American human beings have been slaughtered. A tiny few were for rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. The original pitch was that abortion was to be safe, legal and rare. Now the pitch is it's just a bunch of cells.

I could go on and on with the dizzying shifts I have witnessed in my lifetime.

It is important to acknowledge there have been some positive shifts such as civil rights and women's freedoms to be anything we envision. I think these kinds of shifts are evidence of our foundational beliefs in God and the Jesus teachings of love, forgiveness and lifting others.

Yet I cannot shake the terrible vision of decline to the end of all these things we once declared to be self evident. It is possible change the trajectory, to have a reframing of our perspectives, to rise again as a people who bring hope and goodness. I hear scattered voices that could ignite high vision and lead us to freedoms and blessings for all. May eyes and hearts be opened.

God bless and lead us.