Imagine

A great philosopher reportedly said, “There are no words, but there are only words”. It has become a mantra, a creative guiding light. No matter how hard I try, many of my ideas simply refuse to translate. Being new to this process, I must assume that I am not alone.

I reread my post from last Sunday. I, of course, “knew” what it “said”. But when I got to the sentence where I mentioned hymn-like songs, the example that jumped out was John Lennon’s “Imagine”.

In the solitude of my morning (Joanie was at work), I sat and listened to it for the first time in years.

I was never a fan of his “post-Beatles” years. It struck me quite differently than it had in the early ’70s.

I had recently returned from Vietnam, was entering graduate school, and was living in an apartment near the university. Just prior to starting classes, I was awaiting discharge at Fort Jackson and came home each day wearing “jungle fatigues”, feeling very weird to be among carefree undergraduates.

It was the autumn of 1970.

Anti-war sentiment was running high. Some evenings, the odor of tear gas wafted down my street as protests mounted. One day we woke up to news that the president’s office on campus had become “occupied”.

How was I supposed to feel?

I was so thankful that I had returned safely to “the World”, as we referred to it while serving in Southeast Asia. I was entering another phase of my education (I dearly loved going back to school).

We had very little; I was able to matriculate because of the GI Bill.

I could, for a while, continue to shop at the commissary at Ft. Jackson—cheap and good (amazing pork back ribs that I roasted and basted on my small grill).

And yet, and yet…

Rather than feeling proud, I knew that there were many who referred to me and other veterans as “baby killers”.

(I never carried a weapon; I was in supply management.)

I grew up in a small, isolated town. My father had been in WWII, served in the National Guard, and loved his country. I joined ROTC in college, but mostly to avoid being drafted (and it paid $100 a month so that I could eat late-night burgers and play golf—that was a lot of money in the sixties).

Had I been drafted, I could never have gone to Canada to escape my duty to serve. Young traditional southern boys just went when called.

At school, most of my friends were also veterans. We could play golf for free on a fine course at the fort.

We talked about the fact that we never really understood why we had been sent to the conflict.

Yet we did—willingly.

And when we returned, we felt empty, or even worse.

When we turned on our radios, John Lennon sang “Imagine”, and Cat Stevens sang “Peace Train”.

The sentiment was good and genuine, but it was hard to consider it “our music”.

What a thing it was then to listen to, and read the words of, “Imagine” again “for the first time.”

Each moment in which we have been placed has its time and place.

On the morning before we posted “Prayers and Hymns,” we were greeted with the news that our country had bombed another nation (and probably assassinated its supreme leader).

Though we now call it Iran, that country used to be the center of the grand Persian Empire and a religion that called its god Allah and existed for centuries before our American home was even a gleam in the eyes of explorers such as Amerigo Vespucci.

How am I supposed to feel now?

Perhaps that is why Lennon’s words resonated so strongly with me that morning. They were written in another turbulent moment in history, yet they seem to ask the same question of us now.

Lennon wrote:

“Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…”

At this moment my imagination fails me.

Never in my wildest dreams could I (or any of us probably) conjure up a moment in which I could feel more shame at what we allowed ourselves to become.

Speaking of “dreamers”, he also said:

“Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one.”

Some folks know me as a dreamer.

I just have to hope and believe that there are bigger dreamers than I, and that they will have the position and ability and vision to find a way to end this nightmare.

What “joy” could my fellow brothers in arms feel in the years to come as a result of their having “answered the call” of going for “God, Country, and my Baby,” as the song lyrics proclaimed?

(I cannot help but think of John McCain—a true war hero, a prisoner in a foreign country, and a true patriot—who was later ridiculed publicly for that sacrifice.)

Who are we, and what have we become?

At this moment my emotions are being almost overwhelmed by the reality with which we are faced as a country.

It is dire.

Consider this:

“…Your presidents of late have, unbelievably, failed to know, and to consider, the interests of the country and its people as a whole. Surely this can lead only to disaster. They may know policy and politics, but these, even to someone educated in them, are in the last analysis not much more than a game. Thus the politicians have transformed the life of a nation into a game they play continuously for their own edification.

But games are man-made abstractions, as weak as water, with none of the fullness, beauty, and consequence of life.

I think the model of a president should be a man who comes to you and says, ‘This is what I have seen, this is what I believe, this is how I live, and this is what I love.’ Surely you would know a man better for this than you would know a man possessed of a list crowded with numbers and littered with prostituted oaths.”

But…perhaps it is not only the politicians who must examine themselves.

“…read your Declaration and Constitution… these are lucid and perfect documents, and if you return to them as faithfully as they have served you since the beginning, they will not fail you.

You have neglected them and are unclear about the duties of a citizen and what comes by right. You seem to have forgotten the ancient battles in which you prevailed, and, more importantly, those that you merely survived.

You seem to have forgotten that your original principles… in a land that was carpeted with virgin stands of trees, and the principles by which you have lived—immaterial and bright, ever-enduring—grew up just as strong and fresh.

Return to them.”

—Mark Helprin, spoken by a character in his novel Freddy and Fredericka

The finger now seems to point back at us—or at the very least, to ask ourselves what kind of country, and what kind of people, we hope to be.

Perhaps, in the end, the real question is whether we can still imagine the world Lennon dreamed about in his song.

These lyrics from Harry Chapin’s “Remember When the Music” have become the closest thing I have to an answer:

“And I dream that something's coming and it's not just in the wind
It's more than just tomorrow, it's more than where we've been
It offers me a promise, it's tellin' me begin
I know we're needin’ something worth believin’ in”