we've got it good here, in America. good things abound.
i hadn't really thought much about that, as an explicit theme, before recently. & i'm fairly American, by most conventional estimates.
i was raised as a presbyterian in the PCUSA.
in God we trust, right?
i loved the Manifest Destiny sections of US History, as a kid. i then went on in my senior year of high school to take a course on the History of the Americas, broadly, studying latin america.
i don't like american racism, particularly towards Native Americans.
my grandpa is a retired American farmer from "the backcountry".
not to mention the Ol' American Protestant Princeton Ivy Styles.
he's sad that old American "agriculture" has been transformed, and i guess he wants someone in the family (me) to take over the farm upon his death. his favorite baseball team is the Yankees.
at some point in my youth, i wasn't able to continue competitive swimming since i wanted to continue my studies in aesthetic education. the coach was very disappointed, since i swam butterfly.
he said to me "kid, that's sure disappointing, you could have been all-American..."
growing up in car rides, some of my friends would listen to All-American Rejects or watch America's Got Talent.
in english classes i studied lots of theory, but also (early) American literature, i guess.
eventually i took another class on Catholicism in America.
& i guess if i ever became a lawyer, i could continue "forward" in the post-progressive traditions of American education and jurisprudence. or if i went to seminary, there too are American motifs.
it seems everytime America becomes a theme, it is always there in the background of this American Life. the expectation of me is to be a successful American, which i have, on the whole, failed to do.
...but what is wonderful is that that is totally okay, because things are good in America.
(more American racism, lol.)
and yet, at the same time, it appears the greater good seems to be always already at work.
and in lent, this still requires self-sacrifice. so, America, what are you surrendering to the greater good?