Tom

“America tells a story about itself. It’s a story based on freedom, equality, opportunity, and fairness. These imagined values spin a narrative that America is the place where the divine story uniquely comes together with the human story and unfolds as divine providence. We could call it the myth of American exceptionalism. Together, these notions serve as a location for the American dream. This false narrative has become, to many people, a real place. But the place they imagine is formless. Western minds think of “the land of the free” in terms of all land: a vague place, a nostalgic and fuzzy landscape. America, according to the American dream, is the place where all these wonderful traits are sewn into the national story—and not in any one place, but rather “from sea to shining sea.” When Americans think of land in the abstract realm, it becomes universalized, meaning “all land.” But all land, which is concretely inconceivable, means no land. So land becomes not a real place but an abstract reality. American exceptionalism—and its progeny, the American dream—contains an ethic of extreme competition, to the point where Americans believe we must fight (read “kill others”) to be free and retain our divinely bestowed values. Native Americans were killed by the millions to create this myth. And yet the greatest leaders of all time—Jesus, Buddha, Guru Nanak, Black Kettle, Mahatma Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., and others—call us to peace through very different narratives. Each had the ability to observe the worst of life but tell a story that makes us better. Each told a better story. How do we hear a better story to replace the half-truths of history? We listen to people with a different view who tell another side of history. The fact remains that we live our lives according to our myths—our narratives. We find what fits in such a myth, and we make that part of our own personal story. We leave out the histories that don’t fit our myths, like genocide and ecocide. But when we leave out any part of the story, we distort reality. America has taught people to live against each other and against nature and has justified and even glorified these actions. We have a long way to go to counteract the American myth and reverse the tide. We have a long way to go to accept our reality.”
― Randy Woodley, Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth