A sweet message for those in need of optimism about America

America is Still Full of Promise -- by Bill Grace

There is a wonderful story told about American GIs toward the end of World War II. When it looked like the war was over and surrender was near, a rumor was spreading throughout the German ranks, "If you see Americans, wave a white flag, raise your arms in surrender and Americans will respect your actions. You will be safe and cared for. You can trust the Americans." The United States was an innocent, wide-eyed, confident and vibrant democracy, and much like an 18-year-old at commencement, we were full of promise

In a few short years, the United States endured Vietnam, the loss of the Kennedys and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Not long after we tumbled headlong into Watergate.

As a nation, we turned from an innocent idealism to an eyes wide-shut indulgence of individualism.

Soon after, the Soviet Union began to crumble under the economic weight of the arms race and many around the world celebrated the collapse of communism. We made a national assumption that the collapse of unbridled communism was some form of divine endorsement of unbridled market economics.

Elected leaders told us that it was "Morning in America" again. It was as if America looked in the mirror and saw that we were neither innocent nor 18, yet we wanted to believe it was morning even if it meant embracing a lie.

We pressed on into the new global era as the lone superpower. As the years moved quickly, our nation danced with scandals and strange bedfellows at home and abroad as long as it was in our national interest.

During those days, the fragile experiment called America, our founding light, our liberating story and our innate promise, became swallowed up in the belly of empire. We said to our leaders with our votes and our civic inaction, "Do what you need to defend my lifestyle; just don't tell me the details."

Today we are engaged in clear immoral and arrogant behavior at home and abroad. And the question is how long this nation or any other nation can endure the hardships of empire. The additional question is how long will the god of justice endure yet another empire that seeks to turn the world into its private means for power and privilege?

But it is not too late for America if we decide to become America again. It wasn't too late for Ebenezer Scrooge to see the error of his ways to recognize that he had become lost in greed and privilege.

No longer innocent, no longer 18, roughed up by life, shaped by our good and bad choices, America is still full of promise.

If we can look at ourselves and confess that when it comes to the principles that framed this powerful experiment, we are off course.

When we make this confession, we will be blessed with the one characteristic that America is in desperate need -- humility.

Guided by humility, we can seek to live out the true meaning of our national creed on a global level and remain morally unsatisfied until there is liberty, justice and human rights for everyone on Earth.

If we listen closely we, like Scrooge, can hear the ghosts of empires past speaking to us:

America, don't rely on your weapons or your dominance in any form; they will fade. If you want to have staying power, choose service, choose love. Use your power to ensure the delivery of basic human needs, water, food, shelter, health care and education to every child on the planet. There is only one planet. We share one future and are tied together in a common destiny.

Only service and love will give the world's poor the justice they seek and in turn give us the security for which we yearn, because we will once again hear our allies and enemies say to one another, "You can trust America."

(Bill Grace is an activist and co-founder of Share the Rock: Nurturing Spiritually Inspired Action for Global Justice.)