Happy Birthday, Land that I love

So...this just poured out in the last 7 minutes...it's sappy I suppose but it's me.


                                        Happy Birthday America
238 years ago, a brave group of Godly men literally risked their lives and fortunes (a bet that most of them lost, by the way) to give birth to a new nation. Think of that by itself...starting a country. I've started two businesses in my lifetime...I can't imagine the wisdom, instinct, courage, and boundless FAITH it took to get together in a room and decide that you were undertaking the start-up of a nation. I literally got tears in my eyes as I wrote that, because in fifty years I have never thought about it like that before. They had to know the trouble this was going to cause. They had to see down the road and understand where the bumps were. And what they could not see, or predict, they allowed for, by building into this country's Birth Certificate, the necessity of Faith. And that's what the Declaration of Independence is...our National Birth Certificate.
They risked it all and took a stand and something called "The American Way" was born.
In the 238 years since, great men have risked their own lives to back the play of those 56 original Americans. That's what they were...the very first "Americans."
In the years that followed, great men like my grandfather, who was a Sea-Bee in the Pacific Theater in WWII. Many of my uncles, including two who fought their way up Iwo Jima from opposite sides, neither knowing the other was also on the island. My father who spent two tours in Vietnam. My friend Tim Lee, who lost both legs to a land mine in Vietnam, and the thousands who served every conflict in between, have risked their lives to make good on the check those 56 first Americans wrote. Every time they went into battle, they said to the world "I'm here for George Washington" or "I'm here for John Hancock" and so on.
I can't even put into words -and I'm a wordy guy- how much I love this country. Maybe it's the immigrant-grandson thing, or the "Last Innocent Age" thing, or the time and place and people I grew up around. But I love her more than almost anything or anyone...certainly more than myself. She is sacred to me. Europe is not. South America is not...even Italy or the Ukraine (the nations of my heritage)  are not. But America is. We say "God Bless America..." but we have long forgotten that this is a plea. A desperate request. A heart-cry. "God...please bless America. We started with You in mind. Many times we have forgotten that, but never more than we have of late." Happy Birthday to my sweet Homeland. I dearly love you.

Remembering America...Looking Back One Year Later

*May 5 marks the first anniversary of the release of what I believe is my best book so far. In the year that has passed, I have learned a lot. I decided to re-release the book with a spruced up cover and the following post script...no other changes were made to content.

                              Remembering America...Looking Back at the Last Innocent Age

A year has passed since I sat down at a Panera on a gloomy Saturday morning in May, in Franklin, TN. and uploaded this book to the publishing world. A long, grinding, difficult, heartbreaking year. So much has happened in that span. So many tears and so many smiles. Along the way, I learned some things.

     I learned how broken we are as a country, as a people. Our spirits are bent, our pockets are empty and our dreams have been replaced with the relentless, harsh minutiae of merely surviving. Surviving policy that chokes off industry and eventually, kills personal achievement. Surviving the cold grip of isolation we feel more and more each day, even as the internet shrinks the world to fit on a fourteen inch computer screen, or a cell phone display no bigger than a credit card.

     We can find out anything we want to about anyone we wish...but we don’t really take the time to know anyone anymore. That has made us angry, short tempered, volatile and exhausted. We left something very important behind when we turned the page on the innocence of the world I wrote about in this book. And we are very, very much worse off for it.

      We have a government that has gone from being big, lethargic, and difficult, to being an industry all it’s own, with a language all it’s own, answering to no one. We the people have been usurped by Me...the ruler. That’s dangerous. That’s frightening.

                                                                  That’s not America.

     I never wrote this book intending to make a political statement. It wasn't necessary and the stories weren't about politics. But they are about Americanism. They are about Patriotism as a way of life, and respect for our heritage and our history and for each other. They are stories about personal greatness, and drive and ambition and desire and none of those things being frowned upon as something bad. They were celebrated as the very things that made us great. Really, truly, great.

      We have removed God not only from schools, but from the lexicon, the public square, and even the sale papers at Christmas. And why? This nation was founded by Christians, upon Christian principles, with Christian ideals, and the goal of allowing all to live here but recognizing what the Founders saw as the superiority of Christianity. We were never a “Christian Nation,” not in the model of a Theocracy, but we were definitely intended to be a predominantly Christian society. We have killed that, and condemned it’s remnants to the scrap heap. Are we better for it?

     Are we better for political correctness or are we more divided? When we strip one group of their right to believe and practice their heritage, and do it in the name of “tolerance” aren't we then being intolerant of that group? When we label every single word we disagree with as “hate” we find ourselves isolated and surrounded only by those who think exactly like we do. That’s tragic.

     Kids are being bullied at a record clip, and the answer is, sadly, more and more kids being pushed to the brink and responding with a gun or a knife. Why? Because political correctness has stripped bare the natural response to “teach a bully a lesson” behind the school yard, or in the bathroom at school. I did it. You did it. In another time in this country, that was part of moving from boy to man, and in almost every case, the two protagonists wound up becoming lifelong friends. Not anymore. Now we press charges, teach anti-bullying classes and merely supress the anger deeper into the psyche of the parties involved.

     Somehow, in the years since the Innocent Age ended, we have attached shame to success, derision to diligence, and we've come to view fierce independence and something akin to madness. Entitlement has stripped us of the rock-ribbed determination to succeed -and succeed our way-  that brought this country the greatness she enjoyed. Why? What is so intrinsically evil about a man refusing a handout and standing on his own, facing the winds of difficulty, and digging in to make another go of it?

     Not every discovery in this past year has been bad. I am homeless again. The house I was renting was sold and this economy still won’t bend enough to let me get back on my feet. But I learned how much I can take in the name of loving my daughter and staying in her life. And it’s a lot. I learned that a real man doesn't look for a handout as much as he looks for another deck to build, or a wall to paint, or a room to remodel. So he does those things and keeps pushing forward...most of the time through tears and sweat and the fear of defeat. 

     I also learned one very sweet lesson, about the power of words and memories. About a month after releasing this book, I sent a copy to Mrs. Messick, Sheila's mom, whom I describe in the opening chapter and whose death inspired, in many ways, the memories of Monroe Avenue and the joys we all shared. I had not talked to Mrs. Messick in a couple of years. It was wonderful as we spoke for an hour or so about the stories in the book, and the times our families had shared. There was laughter, joy, and a few tears. Laughter made the still-fresh pain of losing Sheila just a little more tolerable, if only for a moment. And that was enough.

     I want my daughter to have a chance at this world. What will that take? I think it will take a return to God, to Patriotism, to Americanism, and to a place where we once again force the leaders we elect to feel responsible to us, and not to themselves and their self-interests. Can we do it? I don’t know. But if you’ve read this far...you know that it’s worth the effort.

                                                             God Bless America.

                                                                Craig Daliessio

                                                                     4-13-2104

Airbag Christianity: Cushioning the Blow of a Head-on Collision with Jesus Christ

There comes a point in every Christian's life -if you are serious about your Faith- that you'll be faced with a decision that will cost you. Mine came today.

Last year, a friend of mine I've known since childhood took his stand. He is a pastor back home, and when Delaware was voting on same-sex marriage, George decided he could not stand by and watch the state legislate this law into existence without speaking up. He did. It was his crossroads moment. Whether you agree with him or not, he made a conscious decision on principle and he stood.

I became a Christian at a fairly young age. I was eight or nine years old. So I didn't get saved from much as far as a personal history of sinful behavior. Nor was I simply bull-rushed to the altar after Sunday School and told to repeat a prayer. My first Sunday School teacher was a sweet man named Bill Bell, and he carefully explained to me that I was a sinner, just like everyone else. One sin or a million sins was not the issue. The issue was my nature. I prayed with him that Sunday, and I got saved. Saved from my nature. Saved from the same condemnation that awaits all mankind. I was born again. Because the first time only resulted in a lost soul entering this world. You don't hear these terms much anymore. You hear "engage" "interaction" and the ever popular "relationship."  Listen...I have a relationship with the mailman, because I need my mail. But I don't know a thing about him. We don't hear clear-cut messages about salvation anymore. We hear about "manifestations of the Spirit" "Prosperity" "God wants you to be super duper awesome" "God is love" "Speak the Kingdom into your life!" and "Go claim your destiny in Jesus name."  Around Williamson County, where I live we hear about well-drilling in lower Bungaloor, we hear 10 weeks about the Holy Spirit and His work, we hear about the latest Duck-call maker and how he is our new buddy, but we don't hear "Don't be so surprised that I have told you, you must be born again!"  (John 3:7)  We announce on Social Media when the Governor visits our church, or the grand opening of a brand new satellite campus where no teaching pastor actually exists and instead the main pastor drops down on a viewing screen like the jumbo-tron at Cowboy Stadium. "Heeeeeeere's Pastor!"

We have prayer lines where believers stand and get prayed for. That's wonderful. But then we close the service and send the masses home with a gesture of the hand and pronouncement of a benediction, but without the opportunity to avail themselves of the altar, and do their business with God.

We'll occasionally applaud the story of how brother so-and-so came to church, loved it, and then a few weeks later he prayed with his neighbor and accepted Jesus. Meanwhile, we ignore the fact that every single week hundreds of brother so-and-so's are in the seats in our mega building and we preach an awesome sermon about the Christian life without ever asking them, directly and forcefully, if they actually have that life within.

The Cross of Calvary is the defining moment of world history. It was the head-on-collision moment between mankind and God. One does not come to the cross and leave unphased. One does not meet the Christ of God in his torment and suffering on Calvary, and it deliver only a glancing blow. Calvary is a face-first, head-on collision. Your metal gets twisted and your frame is bent. The window through which you viewed this world gets shattered and the paint that made it seem so beautiful gets scarred. And when the impact is over and you grind to a halt on the path that lead you to this hill on the outskirts of Jerusalem...you do not continue on the same path. You awake from the fog of the way you have been living, and you shake your head to clear the cobwebs, and you check to see what it was that you hit. And then you see the fearsome menace of the cross and you see it has not moved.  The Cross of Jesus Christ is the immovable object and the irresistible force.

It draws you to itself and then it breaks you on impact. It is not a sideswipe. It is not a glancing blow. It is most definitely not a hit and run...Jesus doesn't just drop in, make a few corrections, and then leave you with his insurance card in hand. You slam face-first into the cruelty of Calvary. There is blood. There is damage to your old frame. There is noise and violence as the nature you were born with is demolished and destroyed and the new life of Christ Himself is put in it's place. There are no airbags to cushion the impact.

But the church today has tried to become just that...an airbag to soften the impact of the most impacting moment in human history.

I can't play that game anymore.

When I was 14, I sat beside a campfire at Summit Lake Camp in Emmitsburg MD. My church didn't have a Youth Pastor at the time and so we didn't go to summer camp.  I went with another church because some friends invited me. That Friday night I sat by that fire, and listened to the preacher, and heard God calling me. I said yes. From that day forward, He has had a plan in place. I spent my entire high school years thinking about that plan and hoping to see it happen. One day I read in Ezekiel this verse, and it radically changed my life. It's Ezekiel 22:30  “I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one."

I don't know why that verse would leap off the page at me at age 14. I don't know why in 1977 I was already so acutely aware of the path we were on as a nation and how big a role the Church was playing in where we were heading. In hindsight, this played a large part in my affinity with Liberty University, and with Dr. Falwell. I saw that verse as literal. And I saw "the land" as America. No, I do not believe this verse specifically applies to America. I believe this verse is typical of any nation that claims Christianity as it's base and it's founding doctrine. I believe this verse applies to any nation that is founded upon principles derived from Christian doctrine. I do not believe America was ever a "Christian Nation" in the classical sense. We are not a Theocracy. But when the founding Fathers decided to build this nation on principles, they chose the principles outlined in the Bible. They chose to build a nation based on Faith in God and they crafted laws that favored the practice of religion, particularly Christianity. 

I look at that verse today -36 years later- and it still feels as ominous and still moves my soul. There is a gap in the wall. The hedge has fallen down. God is seeking righteous men to stand in the gaps and make up the hedge so that He would not have to destroy the land, but He finds none.

He is not finding the voices of ones crying in the wilderness. He is not finding clarion calls to repentance and redemption in the Osteens, Paula White's and Rob Bell's of this world. He is not finding it in the mega churches of Williamson county where half the population starts their Sunday morning and leaves without a clear-cut presentation of the doctrine of salvation. How is it that Tennessee is the most churched state in America, and the most corrupt? ( list of corrupt states )

Because we have preached a grace that is a disgrace in the eyes of God.

I believe in grace. My life was changed by reading “The Ragamuffin Gospel” because I had become enslaved by legalism. But we have overreacted to the legalistic chains of the 60’s and 70’s and 80’s and bound ourselves with a chain just as insidious. The chain of deception that everything is permissable. We do not preach a Cross-of-Christ experience that bends our metal, and twists our frame, and scars our paint, and breaks the windows we see ourselves through. We've preached airbag theology. We've softened the impact of the very cross that Jesus died on. Jesus Himself made this bold self-pronouncement in Matthew 21: 40-44
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?  “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.  Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

That’s not a fender-bender. That’s not a cheap-grace, imitation gospel. And that’s not universalism. You have two choices and those choices become your destiny. When you come to the Cross of Christ you will either fall on it in surrender, and be broken and rebuilt...or the Cross of Jesus will fall on you in Judgment, and you will be shattered and destroyed. There is no middle ground. There is no cheap repair, and discount paint job. Where is this message today?

I can’t escape this anymore. I can’t sit back and watch this country slip into the grasp of evil and not speak up. The church is to be the salt and the light and she is neither.

36 years ago, God burned this into my heart. He apparently wasn't kidding.

More on that tomorrow... 

Crumbling under the weight...why I'm so open with my story.

*I've never "dedicated" a blog article before. But I'm going to with this one. This article...and hopefully the awareness it stirs...is for those for whom this journey became too hard. The weight became too heavy, The night too dark...

...and the loneliness too lonely. You weren't alone after all...

My “Open Letter to Obama” has gotten some attention, that’s for certain. Attention from some in the media, thousands on Twitter and Facebook, and the blogosphere.

But one group of people has been paying attention to this letter, and subsequently to my plight, with particular interest. It’s the people who have been or currently are in, the same situation.

If you get a moment, go back to that article (An Open Letter To President Obama) Link is here: Open Letter and read the comments. These are real people. People who owned homes, and had dreams, and lived lives. They aren't lazy, or slackers, or stupid people. They weren't drug abusers or alcoholics. They probably weren't “In over their heads”  financially. One man has an advanced degree. One lady faced severe physical health issues.

Last night, I got a message from a friend on Twitter. Her brother in law committed suicide two years ago because of a situation almost exactly like mine. She told me that she wished he could have read my article, because who knows but that it might have stopped that tragedy.

I have, in the past, been accused of being too honest in my writing. People wonder why I lay my soul out there for public scrutiny. It’s because of notes like that. It’s because countless times over the past 6 years I have been writing and blogging and telling my story –first of being a single dad and the man’s side of a painful divorce, then of homelessness- and I have heard from the broken. I have collected hundreds of emails, and comments from men who didn't want their divorce. Who loved their wife and adored their family and wanted only to be a good husband and father. The overwhelming majority of the time a man finds my divorced dad’s blog, he uses some variant of the search “Divorced dad...missing my kids.” Most of the time these searches come at very early hours...2 or 3 AM. I imagine it’s a sleepless daddy who is so broken and so consumed with longing for his children that he types those words in a search engine just hoping that whatever bounces back brings him comfort.

Hearing of this dad who could not face another day in a world that saw him as a failure broke my heart. It broke my heart because it reveals a lot about this nation and it’s moral compass.

We live in a country now, where being a man means having the world on your shoulders. And if you stumble and fall, you are a failure. Zig Ziglar often said “Failure is an event...not a person.” But sadly...old Zig doesn't speak for this America. He did, for a long time men like Zig expressed the heart of this country. But we've become a jagged, fractured, disconnected collection of individuals and personal goals. We don’t live in neighborhoods anymore. We live in clusters of houses. Bunkers. Beautiful, well decorated, immaculately landscaped prisons of individuality and isolation. Cookouts and block parties are a thing of the past. And with them...friendship. With them, a caring, concerned sense of community and belonging.

When you separate everyone into little fractured piles of individuality and selfishness, when you pit race against race, class against class, and heritage against heritage...you get isolated people. You kill community. You destroy neighborhoods. We have a President right now who relishes in this. A man who has made it an art form to divide us against each other. White against black. Black against white. Conservative black against liberal black, against Hispanic, against Catholic, against left-handed Americans of German ancestry, born on Tuesdays between 1953 and 2011. He has us in 350 million phone booths, broken apart from each other.

When that happens...when a nation united becomes a nation untied...a place where 350 million people just live side by side without ever becoming real honest friends...then broken hearted dads who face hard times find no hope, and they kill themselves.

Let me tell you a little of how hard this is.

One time, fairly early in this homeless walk of mine, I went to my daughter’s school to have lunch with her. She was in the sixth grade. We had a blast together at her lunch table, as we always did. I was always in the habit of having lunch with her at least once a week as it was. But after being homeless, I did it a little more frequently when I could, because it gave us more time together.

I left her school and got in my car and drove off. About a mile down the road, I had to pull over. A wave of grief came over me and I knew a meltdown was coming. I pulled into a parking lot and broke down into deep, body-wracking sobs. Why? Because walking out of her school that day, the thought came over me in a terrible, dreadful flood: “What if one of her friends finds out I’m homeless? What if they start teasing her because of it?” It was more than my daddy’s heart could bear. I wept loudly for probably 15 minutes.

In the first few days after losing my home, a friend let Morgan and I use a loft apartment over their barn to stay in. It had a bathroom and shower and a living room. We slept on air mattresses. She was barely 10 years old. It was sort of an adventure to her and I don’t know that she quite comprehended what it meant when I said we weren't living at our house anymore.

We had a beautiful cat named Giacomo. Jackie had to be boarded at this point. She missed her cat, but she figured this was all temporary (as I did too) and so she figured that in a short time we’d have Jackie back, and our two Springer Spaniels, and we’d be a happy family again. She spent the weekend at a friends house during this time we stayed in the loft. When I picked her up, she explained that her friend’s mom had a yard sale that weekend and she had purchased two framed pictures. They were hand-drawn sketches of a cat. A cat that looked a lot like Giacomo. We got back to the loft and she propped them up against the wall at the head of her air mattress. When I saw them the next morning, I had to go outside because it so broke my heart and I didn't want her to see me crying. When I close my eyes I still see those two pictures, places carefully at the end of her mattress. Little framed reminders of the cat she was missing. I might never be able to forgive myself for my daughter not having her pets anymore.

If you want to know how this stuff hits a man...there you have it.

I have fallen to sleep in tears, in the middle of the winter (the coldest temps I have ever slept in, in the car, was about 17 degrees) and woken up with ice on my face. Every single day that goes by without a home for my daughter to come to is something I can literally feel escaping my grasp. I watch her growing up from afar...without a room of her own in a her dad’s house. If you want to know what will make a man feel like an abysmal failure...that is it. I have cried more tears than I could ever count. I have stopped making promises to her, because time and again, things happen like being frozen out of a job because of hiring moratoriums.

I don’t smile much. I have become thin-skinned and angry a lot. I used to be the class-clown.  Hearing about a man who broke down and couldn't take it anymore is no surprise. I’d be lying if I said I’ve never considered whether my daughter wouldn't be better off without her failed dad. That’s how it feels sometimes. I have received mostly wonderful, kind, encouraging comments. But I have also received comments from vicious, mean-spirited, unkind, unChristlike people who are convinced that somehow, someway this is all my fault, and all because I don’t want to work. I have worked since I took my first paper route at age 11. I have never been without a job. Never. Not. Ever. Until 2008.

Next week I turn 50. Maybe that’s got a lot to do with me not getting hired, I don’t know.

But this sure isn’t what I thought 50 would look like.

So if you read my blogs or hear me talking somewhere...don’t attack me for being blunt and honest. Re-read what I just wrote. Ask yourself if you knew how homelessness felt before reading it. Ask yourself if you found yourself in this situation, would it feel better knowing someone else was out there, walking this same path?

I write these things for you. So you know how this affects people in this situation. But I also write it for the others in this situation. Because maybe, had this story been out there two years ago, maybe my friend’s brother-in-law wouldn't have lost hope altogether. Maybe a family wouldn't be grieving still.

God bless us, every one.

The Star Spangled Banner...unabridged version

I was maybe 6 or 7 years old when I found my grandfather's Naval manual. He had been a Seabee in WWII in the Pacific Theater. Inside the front cover where the words to our National Anthem "The Star Spangled Banner" by Francis Scott Key
Until that time, I only knew the first verse, the one we sing at ball games.
Here are all four stanzas. Remember the context, Key was being held on a British warship, while they bombarded Fort McHenry in Baltimore. The battle was fierce and waged all through the night. Peering into the pre-dawn light...amidst the smoke of the battle, Key strained to see the flag, because if the flag still flew, the American's had not surrendered...

 O say can you see by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation.
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave

Feeling Disconnected. Holding Politicians Accountable in an Anonymous World

                                        

I feel disconnected.

I feel disconnected from my country. I don’t feel like we’re American’s anymore. I feel like we’re selfish and more concerned with our side winning whatever argument is on the table. Don’t get me wrong...I feel that my side is right on most of the major issues. I’m a conservative. Very conservative. I’m a patriot. Very much a patriot. When I owned a home and was watching a ballgame on TV –even if I was alone- I stood for the National Anthem and sang along, with my hand over my heart. If I’m watching a game at a sports bar I still do that.

There was a time in this country when that wouldn’t be odd at all. But now words like “Tea-Party” “jingoistic” and even “nut” come to mind when people see someone doing that. Why?

Because we’re disconnected.

There was a time in this country when being a patriot, being over-the-top American, was admirable. It used to be that Independence Day was almost as sacred as Christmas, or Easter. It was that way nationally because it was that way locally.

But now we stay inside. We hide behind our fenced-in yards, drive straight into the garage at night, and never see our neighbors. We’re disconnected. We don’t know each other. We are all anonymous. We interact more on Facebook and Twitter than we do  sitting on our front porch, or at a cookout.

When I was a kid, it was almost typical to wake up in the morning, come downstairs, and find one of the other moms on the block sitting at our table, having a cup of coffee with my mother. Not every day. Hardly on school days at all. But once or twice a week, and more in the summer. Or they came over and sat on our patio, and talked while we kids swam in our little pool.

When was the last time you had a cup of coffee with a neighbor? When was the last time it happened spontaneously? Without invitation or planning. Not a book club gathering, or a scheduled meeting to plan the Christmas bazaar. Just a spontaneous cup of coffee with a friend. That’s how it was then. The phone would ring and 2 or 3 minutes later Mrs. Riccio, or Mrs. Messick, or my “Aunt” Sharon (we Yankees have a thing about christening all our parents’ friends of long standing “Aunt” or “Uncle”. It’s a term of endearment. Most were not related in any way) who lived next door would be sitting at the table with my mom, talking about kids, money, broken washing machines, husbands, and what was for dinner that night.

Does anyone do this anymore? Do we stay put long enough to have friends like that? Not just neighbors, that’s a very generic term unless it has meaning attached. Everyone on your street is your neighbor...even if you don’t know them. I mean neighbors who become friends...for life.

I see us as disconnected. As soon as we move into a house we are already eyeing the next one. Wishing our brand new home had this feature, or that accoutrement. We find old friends on Facebook and accept that as interaction. We base our self-worth on how many Twitter followers we have, and whether our latest bit of wisdom –reduced to 140 characters of pure genius- has been retweeted. Readers might laugh at this, but you also know it’s true for almost all of us. We all get caught up in this virtual lifestyle we lead now.

My daughter talks to her friends on Skype. I talked on a phone. In a coat closet. With the cord shut in the door. We went outside and played after school, and saw each other face to face. The adults were tinkering with a car in a garage, or cutting grass, or raking leaves. Now they pay someone to do that for them, and cars are repaired with laptops instead of wrenches.

I don’t dislike technology...not in the least. But I dislike the disconnect we all feel because of it’s intrusion into our social setting.

If you remain disconnected long enough, all sense of community dies. And behind that are the death of civility, caring, understanding, decency, respect, honor, integrity...and accountability.

We are a nation of zero accountability. We have leaders who are no longer accountable to us. Not like they were in my youth. They are unaccountable because they are unknown. Knowing who your Senators are is easy. Knowing who your Congressmen are is easy. Knowing them is lost on us. I mean knowing them. Knowing them because they are part of the neighborhood.

In my book, “Remembering America: Looking Back at the Last Innocent Age,” I tell a wonderful story about writing to our Congressman at the time. His name was Pete DuPont and I wrote to him in the 3^rd grade, relating my concerns about pollution. (It was 1972...we were all into “ecology”) The thing is, I knew who he was. I was eight years old but I knew who he was. I saw him at events. I knew his face. When he got a letter from an 8-year-old boy at Wilmington Manor Elementary School, he took the time to answer. (Doubtless with the help of a staffer) He was part of our community. He knew that when he came home from D.C. and toured the state, he was going to meet people who had seen him before. People his kids went to school with. People who he had helped with problems. He was accountable to us because he was not anonymous.

Look where we are now. We move around so much, looking for that magical floor-plan that will make us feel like we’ve finally arrived, that we don’t know anything at all about the people next door. Or down the street. Or in the pick-up line at our kids’ school. They must be okay...they live in my neighborhood. But I don’t know them. Not at all. We are totally disconnected.

All throughout my teen years and early twenties, when I envisioned owning a home one day and raising a family, I wanted to recreate the neighborhood I grew up in. I wanted my daughter to have life-long friends who lived two houses away. I wanted to have big, cookouts where the whole block came. I wanted to be noticed by some dear people in this huge anonymous world. I wanted to make a few friends later in life, and work on cars, and raise our kids, and split the cost of renting a roto-tiller each spring to dig our gardens.

I have none of that. Few of us really do.

We are an anonymous, invisible, isolated nation now. Slowly –in my lifetime- we have all crawled into our own shells of anonymity. We buy a house, put up a fence, install a few cameras, and an alarm system, and stay indoors. We sit on the deck in the back yard. We have wonderful, amazing neighbors with wonderful amazing stories living right next door. Or across the street. And we’ll never know about them. Because in 2 or 3 years we’ll be moving again. Or they will. They’ll maybe come for dinner once...after three or four years, and almost as many cancellations and reschedulings. But they’ll never just “pop in” with a cup of coffee in hand and sit and chat. They won’t amble over while I have the hood up on my car, just to hold a flashlight while I gap the spark plugs, with no real intention than to just visit for an hour, nurse a beer or two, and get to know each other.

We are disconnected. We are distant. We are all divorced from each other and it renders each of us worthless to all but our dearest friends and family. The rest of the world sees only some guy. Some guy in an ugly car, driving too slow in the left lane so we flip him off. Or a fast-rising executive who sees nobody in the restaurant save his perfect reflection. So he has a loud, rude, animated conversation on his cell phone, while I try to eat my sandwich. If I shoot him a dirty look, he responds with a dismissive glare. If he cares enough to respond at all.

We are disconnected. From each other. From our nation. From our God. From ourselves.

We have been told what we want, and need, for so long now that we don’t really know anymore. We forgot the thing we once dreamed about. We are so worried about getting our kids into the best school, the best cheerleading camp, the best dance class, the best football program, that we forgot what miracles they really are. It’s not that we don’t love them. It’s that we forgot to tell them. We disconnected from them. And sadly, there is myriad temptation and turmoil waiting to fill the void, and connect with our disconnected kids.

Maybe if I had not lost my home, and my career, and my life, I wouldn’t have this perspective. Maybe if I had remained in the Philadelphia area, I would never have felt so disconnected. But then maybe I wouldn’t have noticed it in myself...and in this country.

We’re all anonymous. From the President –whom nobody really yet knows anything about- on down to the folks next door. Anonymous. Invisible. We scream at the talk-radio host and we actually feel hatred sometimes. Hatred for a person we’ve never met. That happens only when a society is disconnected from each other. Only when we are so anonymous that we don’t matter anymore.

And when we, as a society, see each other that way, (Or better stated don’t see each other at all) then we have leaders who hide behind the anonymity and abuse their power. The first abuse is indifference. We see that all the time now. We elect men based on party platform, and speeches, and when they get to Washington they do the opposite of what we thought they would. They don’t represent their electorate anymore. Because they don’t know their electorate anymore.

Because they aren’t one of their electorate anymore.

They are anonymous. They are disconnected.

If this country has any hope remaining, she is going to have to reconnect.

Reconnect to each other. Reconnect to the heart of patriotism whose beat is muffled- almost to silence- somewhere in her great chest. Reconnect to the spirit of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution and the ideals they held dear.

Reconnect to the God who blessed them with those ideals.

We need to reconnect. Reconnect to everything great that made this country great. Or we will surely become as anonymous as grains of sand on the seashore of eternity. 

"The America I Remember" a Follow-up to my Open Letter to President Obama

                                                           The America I Remember

Two days ago I posted an open letter to President Obama. It came from the heart, and it resonated with an awful lot of folks. The response was overwhelming. I had over 500 hits in a little more than 24 hours.

That response got me thinking. Thinking about this great country and what has happened to her in the short span of my lifetime. I will be fifty years old in exactly two weeks. I was born on September 7, 1963. That’s a blip on the screen in the history of this land. Yet, in those brief fifty years, this country has changed dramatically.

I remember an America where stores did little or no business on Sundays. Almost all were closed. It was a day of rest, and reflection. It was the Sabbath for some, but it was respected by all. It was expected that those who’s faith observed a Sunday Sabbath –most Christian denominations- would attend their services on this day. The rest of the community respected this. Sunday was a quiet day. I was a paper boy from age 11 until age 15. I would begin delivering the Philadelphia Inquirer at 5AM on Sunday mornings. There is a sacredness to an early Sunday morning. A solemn, almost holy feeling. The rest of the world was not yet awake, but I was. I was 11 years old, and it was my job to carefully place that newspaper between the storm door and the entry door...and do so without waking the dog, and disturbing the still-sleeping occupants.

It was a great responsibility for an 11 year old boy. I was, in effect, the town crier in modern form. These were the days before 24 hour cable news channels or the internet. The morning headlines, in print form, were the only means for news, with the lone exception of news radio. I loved how that felt. I loved the importance of delivering the news. I delivered the headlines that proclaimed the end of the Vietnam War. I’ll never forget that.

Sunday’s were for family and faith and reflection. They usually concluded with us on the floor, watching "Wonderful World of Disney."  Somewhere in the late 70’s, someone decided that Sunday was an untapped market for retail sales. Stores began to open on Sundays, and before long, Sunday was just another day.

I remember an America where patriotism was the norm. In fact, it was expected ...demanded even. Opening day of little league saw us marching into Stahl Field  (the home field complex for Suburban Little League, where I played) in our old-school wool pants with high-stirrup socks and wool ball caps. We came in team-by-team. The announcer would announce each player and then he’d play the National Anthem on a scratchy old vinyl record on that awful one-speaker P.A. system. For us it was like standing at Veteran’s Stadium, and being announced in the Phillies lineup. We immediately pulled our caps off our heads and held them over our hearts and stood like statues. No one had to tell us. We knew to respect our flag and our anthem. We sang along proudly. We were Americans.

I remember finding my grandfather’s Navy manual around this time. I was maybe 9 or 10. He had been a Seabee in the Pacific theater during WWII. The manual was full of all manner of wonderful information for a young boy. The semaphore alphabet. The Morse code alphabet. How to dress properly in your uniform. The Naval oath, and all four stanzas of the National Anthem. I read it for hours and it felt like I had discovered the Dead Sea scrolls. It was like having a little piece of America right there in my hands.

Being an American took priority over whatever else we were. Nobody hyphenated their heritage. We were Americans. We were proud of where we came from, but not nearly as much as we were proud of where we were. I don’t see that now.

I remember an America where people worked hard and truly appreciated the fruit of their labors. I grew up in a very blue collar, working-class neighborhood in New Castle, Delaware, just 15 miles south of my native Philadelphia. Nobody on our street was wealthy. None of our neighbors were social climbers. They were appreciative of even owning a home. They worked hard, bought cheap, and stayed for a lifetime. This gave the neighborhood character and connection. It made it a real community. People stayed in one place and got to know each other. I lived in the same house from age 7 until age 23. Nowadays people move every 3 years. We buy a house, put up a fence, install a security system, hang cameras from the eaves and enter and exit through the garage door. We never see our neighbors.

I grew up in an America where cookouts meant the whole block was invited, and most of them came. The dads cooked real food on mounds of charcoal.  These days you only know of a cookout on your block if you catch the faint wisp of smoke from a gas grille. I’m not lamenting technology. But there was a charm to watching our dads carefully shape a pile of charcoal so it created a draft and burned evenly. Seeing them somehow instinctively know how much lighter fluid was just enough. Watching as they flicked a wooden match from a safe distance and hearing the “whoosh” of the ignition.

It takes time for charcoal to light, grow hot, and settle into a proper heap for cooking. In those 30 or 40 minutes, the dads would have a beer, listen to the ball game or throw a ball around, and chat. They slowed down. They told bad jokes. They talked about cars. They enjoyed each other.

Nowadays, even the grilles are in a hurry. Cookouts aren't the morning-until-bedtime affairs they were when I was a kid. They aren't the entire-block parties either. Now it’s by invitation only. We have a grille that’s ready in 7 minutes, we eat some fish that we bought at Whole Foods and we drink white wine. Our dads shaped real hamburgers from really fatty ground beef, with their bare hands (that they may or may not have washed first) and knocked back Piels’ Big Mouth beers that cost $3.56 for a 12-pack. They scraped the grille about once each summer. They swatted a fly and flipped a burger with the same spatula. They laughed loudly at dumb jokes. They talked for hours. They were friends...for life. There was a ballgame on the radio and kids splashing in a pool.

I remember when my friend Kevin’s dad died. Mr. Ferraro who lived up the street, and whose sons were also friends of mine, was talking to me in his garage one evening, a few months after Mr. Messick passed. I was in my early 20’s by then. Hanging out in Mr. Ferraro’s garage was a rite of passage on Monroe Avenue. One night we were talking about the block. Talking about how we’d all grown up there, Mr. Messick’s kids, me and my brother, Mr. Ferraro’s kids. Then Mr. Ferraro got wistful, and quiet and laughed softly at something we remembered about Mr. Messick. He looked up and said “I really miss Bill”.  And he had a tear in his eye. These were not men who wept. And so I knew this came from someplace deep inside him. This was a friendship forged over 30 plus years of living in the same place and seeing each other almost every day. You sure don’t see that these days.

This is the America I remember. It’s the America I miss. I think a lot of folks miss it as well. I think that’s why my letter resonated so much with so many people.  I think those folks remember the America I do. We remember an America where we hated to see our country taking a beating, either on the battlefield or in public opinion. We hated seeing our country down economically. We hated seeing patriotism lagging.

In the America of my childhood, I wouldn't have had to write an open letter to my President, telling him of my plight. He would have known. He would have cared. He wouldn't have been off on yet another vacation or golf outing, because he would have come from the same heart of America that I did. And he would have a citizenry holding him accountable. My neighbors would have rallied around me and others like me. I know, because I saw it when I was a kid.  I saw the dads who knew of good jobs, helping the dads who needed a job, to get one. I saw them putting in a good word, giving a referral, opening a door. America was a community then. And that community demanded that it’s leadership do what they were sent to Washington to do. And because we were united, and because we were patriots, and because we knew the Constitution and knew civics...they could not get away with what they offer up as leadership today.

I remember an America where serving on the local, state, or federal level was a privilege, and an honor, and most of those men and woman would have done it for free.  Now, it’s a business. A game. A new level of aristocracy.

I remember a better America. And judging from the amount of response I got to a simple open letter to the President...so do a lot of other folks.

I pray we can get that America back. 

(This is the kind of writing I do. I recently wrote a book entitled "Remembering America: Looking Back at the Last Innocent Age"  While this is not an excerpt from that book...this is the sort of story that fills those pages. Writing became a haven and a shelter for me as this long winter of homelessness and joblessness has dragged on.)