What Happened to America-Jane's Sunday Sermon

My partner, Phil Basten, and I work with people all over the world.

When they hear we are from New York City...

First, they want to know all about our wonderful city and then
they want to know what is it like now to live in America.

They ask the same questions over and over again.

What Happened to America?
Where have you gone?
What happened to your guiding light?
What happened to your joie de vivre?
What happened to the hands that always reached across the sea?
What happened to the grand mosaic that was America?
What happened to that strong, innovative country that everyone wanted to imitate -many wanted to visit and some longed to live and work in?

I tell them we have disappeared for a while.
Gone underground.
Withdrawn from the world.
Turn warm hearts into lumps of coal.
Took a path into the heart of darkness.

I tell them not to worry.
America will be back.

I tell them that the women of this country are strong, determined, nurturing by nature and capable of rallying the good people of American to embrace  their better angels and to encircle their fellow countrymen and the world with hope and care once again.

I say these things to myself over and over again hoping that I can will them to be true.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself to remind myself that there were times when America rose to the occasion and had her shining moments.

I remember our history as we fought to free ourselves from Tyranny.

I remember the struggles that followed to free ourselves from the everlasting stain of slavery.

I remember the women’s' struggle to vote.

I remember the unending immigrant rag to riches story that pepper our land even today.

I remember how we got up and stood up when my glorious city was hit on 9.11 and with unyielding resolve, chose to be vigilant but victorious even after we got knocked down so viciously.

I remember the struggle for gay people to marry and to retain the dignity that all Americans are entitled to.

But I also know- having lived in the 20th century that...

No Democracy can long survive a constant assault on its institutions unless the people who value those institutions are willing to fight like hell to retain them.

We were never a perfect union but we were never so arrogant as to think we were an island ready to survive on our own.

Our pioneers spread out across the country banding together in wagon trains and then in steamer trains and then planes and then rockets that led to the moon. We surrounded ourselves with each other and forged thriving, proud communities.

We are not a people who do well standing still, pulling in our horns, closing our blinds, turning our backs, shutting out the light.

I have to believe that America will be back and that is only a matter of time until we light our candle again.

But hope can only go so far.

I never again want to hear my neighbors here and abroad ask me What Happened to America?

It is in all of our hands to decide What Happens to America now.

Like planes that disappear suddenly in the Bermuda Triangle, we are submerged for now in some deep murky dark waters that could possibly drown us or, perhaps, wash us up on a waiting sandy shore.

May Your New Year be one of renewed love for a country that has gone missing:

Put your arms around America fill her once again with love and arms outstretched and give her back her warm, generous, wide embrace.

Go get um
Jane

Jane Mark
JAM Marketing Inc

Jane Mark is President of JAM Marketing Inc. She is an author, a businesswoman, a singer of songs, a mother and grandmother who is determined to teach her children the historic past of America, have them participate, with sober reflection ,in its shaky present and help them to be  the ones that lead us out of an uncertain future to that strong, proud country that the world wants to walk with once again.