If you jumble together the five most popular American metro areas – Denver, San Diego, Seattle, Orlando and Tampa – you get an image of the American Dream circa 2009. These are places where you can imagine yourself with a stuffed garage – filled with skis, kayaks, soccer equipment, hiking boots and boating equipment. These are places you can imagine yourself leading an active outdoor lifestyle.
These are places (except for Orlando) where spectacular natural scenery is visible from medium-density residential neighborhoods, where the boundary between suburb and city is hard to detect….
They offer at least the promise of friendlier neighborhoods, slower lifestyles and service-sector employment. They are neither traditional urban centers nor atomized suburban sprawl. They are not, except for Seattle, especially ideological, blue or red.
They offer the dream, so characteristic on this continent, of having it all: the machine and the garden. The wide-open space and the casual wardrobes.
In the 18th C a number of words had meanings different from what we understand today. One of those words is “happy,” which at the time of the Declaration — of which my 4Ggrandfather was a signer — had a meaning nearly identical to the Greek “makarios” in the Beatitudes … “blessed,” or “in right relationship with God.”
Those Declaration rights are easily (and more correctly) paraphrased as “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of a blessed relationship with God.” [i]NOT[/i] more stuff, better spa treatments, and a 1970 Bordeaux.
As a side note, “regulated” in that era main “trained.” Men attempting to enlist in the Revolutionary army were asked “Are you regulated?” Meaning do you know how to shoot? Now apply that to “well-regulated militia” in the Second Amendment, and the intention becomes quite clear.
The other day, I was listening to George Werner, former President of the House of Deputies and currently on the Board of Trustees for the Pension Fund (among other things, I suspect). He talked about the need for our nation and the members of our Church to refocus on “the common good.”
We have gotten so far away from any notion of doing things together for “the common good,” whether it be paying taxes to build and create what we as individual or small groups could not do alone, considering one’s neighbor before oneself, putting off one’s immediate wants to help meet the needs of those less fortunate, patience with one another, respect for those different then oneself (loving even one’s enemy), etc.
It comes into play in the Church, I believe, in our growing inability to consider the whole, rather than our own individual desires for or opinions about liturgy, theology, hermeneutics, piety, etc. In comes forth in our inability to hold one another accountable – or rather one’s determination to not be held accountable. “Common Prayer” becomes moot as the individual or a group “does their own thing” for the sake of self-expression or lesser group-expression.
All these things continue to divide to the point were we no longer terry with one another, but rather we cast out or push far away from one another (or from our group) to the point that we are but an island of one or a select few. We see this increasingly creeping into our family dynamics.
All this, and within the Church! How in the world can we be a positive example of another way – the Way of Christ – when we are no better than those who strive for mammon or self thinking it will bring peace, fulfillment, happiness? What kind of example are WE setting?
Amsterdam is indeed very pretty in the center of town with its tree-lined canals, gracious 18th century houses and the like. However, the bulk of the population live outside the center, in vast city council-owned blocks of apartments that look more like the Bronx. Though they are well-maintained, well-planned and well-connected to the center by tram lines, I cannot imagine most Americans wanting to live like that.
I think that it is Brooks whose vision is pitiable, not that of America. Brooks hankers after Amsterdam. A pretty, tolerant, gay friendly city, whose abundant sex shops stand next to shops for children. It is a single, gay man’s playground.
What America hungers for is not so much suburbia with an outdoorsy twist but what it represents. Family outings skiing. Family outings camping. Family outings hiking. Family outings in the backyard with the barbecue grilling and the neighbors coming over to talk about the game. The big vegetable garden, and the home grown vines lapping up the fence, with grapes hanging off them. The kids climbing the apple trees, and trying to make a tree house. The dogs yapping at their heels.
And us growing old. Watching the trees, so tiny when they were planted grow into fruitful, majestic giants. The grandchildren coming over to eat apple pie.
American’s are right to want the dream. It is a wholesome dream. I do not dream of Amsterdam. Brooks can keep it.
It’s an interesting piece of supposition, but when all is said and done, it’s quite a bit of exegesis from what is a rather short text. Also, I personally would question NYC as a stand-in for Amsterdam; perhaps you could make the former more like the latter, but I suspect the famously fractious inhabitants therein would object.
Clueless, I really appreciate your description. It hit home with me! I concur. I don’t dream of Amsterdam either. I dream of heaven!
On the other hand, Brooks may be hankering after the European-type habitat which has stood the test of ages, whose inhabitants have treated their buildings and natural surroundings carefully, where, when needed, renewal is an oft applied option. Contrast that, say, with decaying American suburbs and towns, where residents don’t face up to the challenges/pressures of growth and social differences, but flee for their lives, only to build more of the same elsewhere– usually with maximum impact upon the land and the water and the scenery. For millions, I believe, the suburbia they inhabit today is no Mecca, but only a way-station to the next location. As one developer told me not long ago, explaining the locust-like exodus from the Washington D.C. area into the Shenandoah Valley: “There’s nothing new here; Americans always trash the places where they live, and then move on.” To the degree that the American dream involves such reckless, if not unsustainable removal to the next open frontier, I see this as a real national weakness, a squandering of our resources.
Clueless, is that what Amsterdam is to you? What a particularly American view of the city. Do you know many Dutch people?
Americans do go to Amsterdam because they can get things without shame or penalty. The Dutch regard such Americans with amusement. They are much more family centered – and community centered, than your shallow stereotype.
I lived in Amsterdam for two years as a child. At that time it was indeed very family centered. We lived in a tiny home in the Hague. I remember it with fondness, and while I have forgotten most of my ?Flemish? I can still sing a few Dutch songs. I remember going tobogganing, and learning to ice skate. My father’s secretary knitted me an unbelievably thick sweater (just as good as coats) for Christmas presents which served me as a coat for about 2 years after which I outgrew it. I found the Dutch people kindly and friendly. As you say very family centered.
I visited it about 20 years ago. There was a large (fake) picture of the Pope peeing an Easter blessing in one of the tourist stores I entered to buy trinkets. (I wasn’t offended back then. I was not Christian at that time, and I thought it funny). The stores also featured sex items whose names I did not know, and whose use I was too embarrased to inquire about. There appeared to be very few children around; it was mostly single, well kept folks in their 40s.
I suppose one is often disappointed when one returns as an adult to a place that one was fond of as a chiid. However I have no desire to return to Amsterdam now, and I certainly wouldn’t take my kids there.
Clueless – Did you live in Amsterdam and The Hague, both?
No I lived in the Hague. I visited Amsterdam of course, both then, and as a tourist more recently. My father was a diplomat at the time.
Oh I see. I didn’t live in Amsterdam. I should have written that I lived in the Hague.
I recall in one of the Wikipedia articles an aphorism to the effect that one should live in the Hague, work in Rotterdam, and play in Amsterdam.
I will say that The Hague was more conservative than Amsterdam. (The Pope picture was in Amsterdam). But even so, for family centeredness, I would take a day in any Midwestern town of equal size (Kansas City, Indianapolis) any day of the week over either place. Actually all of Europe is aging visibly (though in a civil, and well preserved sort of way). I spent a few days in both Belgium (when my dad was posted there, and in Portugal where he was retired, briefly before coming home). There were remarkably few children there, compared to the US where children can be seen all over the place.
I spent time in Europe working in campus ministry with the Assemblies of God (before I became an Anglican). They had yearly European-wide retreats for all the missionaries and their families. I was told of one story of a hotel employee that asked whether our church required people to have “big” families (the average number of kids was around 3, I think). The missionary told her, “No, we just like kids.”