Re-birthing America
Month: June 2016
A Prayer for the Fourth of July
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
This is an actual image of one of the four panels of the words of Thomas Jefferson emblazoned upon the walls of perhaps America’s most sacred shrine, the Jefferson Memorial.
The image was taken in October 2007 on my first pilgrimage to pray for our country’s transformation.
As I offer my thoughts, I invite you to observe this Fourth of July with an interior observance of the heart, as I do, year-after-year. Take time to make these words, of the Declaration of Independence, your own.
Those of you who are young people, realize that these words conceived, founded and established our country.
What existed only in the minds and hearts of our founding fathers and mothers became the United States of America.
But, we have wandered far way from this vision. We fail to realize that we must constantly re-birth America — for good or for ill.
It is my sense that at this critical point of American history that we — each and every American — ought to
re-visit that moment of our founding.
Imagine what it was like.
Imagine their vision of what did not yet exist in the external world.
Imagine the courage they had.
Next to the Word of God, there are no words that are more sacred for me than these.
They are sacred because they reflected divine reality.
God blessed these words of Thomas Jefferson. And our country was born on the Fourth of July 1776.
When I lived in Washington in the summer of 1979 when I was 36 years old,
I would often go and sit in the rotunda of this sacred shrine
and ponder anew the vision of these sacred words.
I’d like to share with you what was going on in my head and my heart 36 years ago
They are faith-based thoughts. I don’t want to impose them on you.
I just share them because they led me to a very positive view of our country and our world,
a view that resists the hatred and violence, the self-indulgence of our comatose society.
As you ponder my thoughts, ask yourself what vision of America, what vision of the world and our future do you yourself have?
What do you want for you, for your children, for our country, for our world, for our planet?
Dearest God,
I believe your Holy Spirit inspired these words:
WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT
THAT ALL [PEOPLE] ARE CREATED EQUAL
AND ARE ENDOWED WITH CERTAIN INALIENABLE RIGHTS.
AMONG THESE ARE THE RIGHT TO LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
As a Christian among other God-fearing women and men,
I address You and love You as my Father.
You are my Father.
But this means that You are not just my Father, but the Father of all those you have created.
You care about every person on this planet who has ever lived or who ever will.
Therefore, we are all equal in Your sight. We are all Persons.
You conceived and created each human being with a unique identity, a body and soul, in Your mind and heart from the very beginning and you sustain each one of us today and for all eternity.
I have come to recognize that ALL of us are in Your family, Father.
And that makes us but sisters and brothers.
Help me to embrace all of Your children on this planet in my heart.
Help me to desire for every one what you have so generously provided for me –
a little place to call home,
simple food on my table,
a decent education
and decent health care.
Help us, Father, to recognize and support
the right of every human person to life, liberty and the pursuit of other people’s happiness as well as our own.
Help us not to be only concerned about our own needs, our own family’s needs,
but to realize that we are all one family.
Yet we are torn apart by hatred and violence; brother still kills his brother.
Help us export love not hate, peace and development for all people, not war and destruction.
This is my constant prayer, heavenly Father, for the world in which I live.
I pray that you would allow us the grace to be able to help bring that about,
not only for the people of America but for the whole world.
To you, heavenly Father ~ Father of my Redeemer and elder brother Jesus ~
all honor and praise and thanksgiving now and forever.
Amen!
This, dear friends, is my constant prayer for the world in which we live,
the world I wish to be a part of and help to bring into reality.
It has ever been such since my lazy summer of ’79 in Washington and always will be.
I don’t expect you to use my words as you pray.
I just invite you to make your own prayer.
Make this Fourth of July a re-dedication to our ideals in this difficult election year.
We need God in our world today.
But we too often rely on ourselves and not on God. Capitalism, by definition, creates that illusion.
I urge you to re-birth the vision of our founding fathers and mothers in your own heart this Fourth of July 2015.
We need to renew that vision, that commitment every year ~ every day,
from the mightiest to the lowest of our land.
Every year I warn us, if we don’t constantly attend to our renewal,
we will lose what we have and are. Great civilizations before us have collapsed because of their complacency.
Nevertheless, it is my sense that God will transform us if we pray and bind together.
If we just co-operate with the process.
Let us be at prayer and reflection, this Fourth of July in the midst of our celebration and fun.
Ask God for guidance. Ask forgiveness for taking all of this for granted.
We need God to bring us through these critical times.
And now, before you go, here’s a powerful song with historical images to inspire your reflection. Click here.
Be sure to enter full screen and turn up your speakers. Enjoy your celebration for it’s still a beautiful land.
With love,
Bob Traupman
contemplative writer
Here’s to those who have fathered us!
Father’s Day 2016 ~ June 19, 2016
As I waited for my appointment at the Genius bar at the Apple store in Ft. Lauderdale a while back, I mused about this young dad and his little son Tyler for a while.
The New York Times reported that we would spend 9.6 billion dollars that year on Father’s Day gifts.
But what I saw in this encounter between father and son is priceless — an exchange of loving touch, an intimacy, a comfortability that many of us never received or feel that we know how to give.
If you did have that kind of closeness to your own father, rejoice and give thanks for it is quite rare; determine to give it to your children.
It’s a simple gift, after all, the gift of loving touch, attention and loving presence. Little else is necessary.
And so, here’s to all the fathers I know!
And those I don’t.
To grandfathers, great grandfathers
and fathers-to-be.
Rejoice. dear fathers, in your daughters and sons!
Give thanks today for what you have wrought,
not only from your loins
but of your spirit.
Perhaps you have been a great father,
Perhaps not.
Just be as good a father as you can be.
That’s all your children want.
The most important part of being a father,
is not what your provide for your family ~
a nice home, good food,
health care, education, lots of cool stuff, all that.
The most important part of being a father
is the time you spend getting to know each one as a unique individual
and to call forth their gifts –
to encourage them to be who they are,
to find their own identity,
– not what you want them to be,
but to find their own place in the sun, the Son.
If life circumstances have caused you
not be the greatest of fathers,
it’s not too late.
Just be the best father you can.
Father Bob's Reflections 