Recently, during a personal writing retreat in Colorado, I was involved in a group book reviews event. (To each his/her own
choice.) I presented a book that I am
currently inching through fervently, riveted by the thesis, knowing it is a
pivotal theme for any resolution of our national crisis. And yes, we are in a
crisis.
The book: The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders by Jacob Needleman. It has
garnered increasing acceptance and acclaim since publication in 2002. At that
pivotal moment, barely post-9/11, he saw, with extraordinary clarity, the state of our disunion. Wiser minds than mine have churned through Needleman's
tight and elastic (both, paradoxically)
explorations and summations, and said "YES!"
His theme? It could be multi-labeled, for all his
applications and intimations, but Needleman basically assert s that our nation
has lost an incalculable gift of
national and international particularity
in a world that needed—and heeded—our unique and God-given/driven view of
nationhood . . . and that we can only recover it by heading back to the
creation of this great primal experiment in governing. For its primal wisdom. By
revisiting our founding fathers—applying to the pursuit a soul-set we've never
really attained before—we identify who and
what each had become as a person at
that historical "moment."
We finally comprehend what they agonized over individually, thrashed
out together and, finally, contracted,
that created "the greatest nation in history." We are invited into a
startling frame of reference on both
character-building and nation-building. We are offered a "dynamic"
that is historic in its integrity and diametrically alien to our present fragmenting
life as a national and world entity.
Also intricately woven into Needleman's chain of premises—as
equally indispensable, and perhaps even more stirring—is the compelling life
witness of Abraham Lincoln. A breakthrough concept of our evolving history
would be impoverished, incomplete, without this remarkable man at the helm
during a pivot point in history. In a
meditation on this president, the author describes, with a depth that can only
be called visionary, the impact upon him of the photos of Lincoln. And because Abe
is the "continuity" that was requisite to our survival as a nation,
he is shouldered firmly into the pantheon of heretofore idealized non-idols who conceived the original
"American dream."
The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders is a masterpiece of historical weaving,
unraveling, reweaving. Ergo, my gratitude for a landing place for my constant,
gnawing concern for this nation, and the stunning relief I experienced in
finding a rationale for this concern. Here I found a practical and prophetic
analysis of what we have lost . . . and what we must admit to—and grieve for.
And yearn to discern in order to become
once again, to survive and thrive as a people.
