Coonridge Digest: What have you learned?

Greetin’s from the Ridge.

Aunt Bertha was the most amazing Sunday School teacher I ever knew. The woman had the patience of Job and a constitution of pure granite. It was her job to take 3rd-grade heathens and in the span of three short years turn ‘em into tolerably presentable sixth-graders, headed smilingly toward the Jr. High class. Her task was Herculean and her results were nothin’ short of miraculous.

Sunday after Sunday she’d manage to first get us herded into the choir loft (in full and vivid view of the adult Sunday School classes), somehow get us to settle down enough to listen with at least one ear, and in 45 minutes time we’d somehow show up at the closin’ exercises to recite our memory verse of the day.

It is with regret that lo, these many years later I must report that I was chief among the poor woman’s consternations. If she’d of died early I’d accept a good deal of the blame, but she lived to a ripe age of "very old" and died happily with legions of her former pupils at the funeral. In fact, a good deal of the post-burial talk was about how much we’d put the poor woman through.

But in spite of Aunt Bertha’s kindness, gentility and sweetness of spirit, the trait that we all remembered most was her ability to forgive. She took Christ’s admonition to pardon a person seventy times seven to heart. With Aunt Bertha we were always given a second chance.

To her way of thinkin’, the most important question was "Have you learned anything from this?"

One Sunday it came my turn to pass around the Pennies-For-The-Poor jar.

I thought I’d add a touch of show biz and toss the thing instead of passin’. The result was Pennies-For-The-Poor-All-Over-The-Carpet.

Instead of whackin’ me with an appropriate scripture, Aunt Bertha suggested I pass it again next Sunday in hopes that I’d have improved my technique by the followin’ Sabbath. With Aunt Bertha, there was always a second chance. And if you didn’t learn in round two, there’d be a third and a fourth.

This war’s gonna be over some day. Even though the wags of Washington warn us to be patient and to settle in for the long haul, the fear and trembling will some day ease up to a livable level. And that’s the moment at which we’ll have the choice.

Unlike most wars in our history, the outcome is pre-ordained. Few have any doubt that America’s gonna eventually find the culprits and bring ‘em to justice. The only question remaining is how long it’ll take and what we’ll have to pay to get there. And that’s the moment at which we’ll have the choice.

Although we’ve tried to curb our imperialist bent, we remain social bullies, tryin’ to Americanize the planet at a culture-bustin’ pace.

Anyone who’s traveled with Americans abroad knows that we practically insist that every foreign location be as American as possible. We cover the world in Diet Coke just in case we’d like to visit Lower Slobbovia over the weekend. We’d like the Hotel Bohavia to be as much like the Holiday Inn as possible and assume we’ve been poisoned if someone dare serve a French fry with anything but ketchup.

But we’ve done worse than devise and conquer. We’ve enticed. Entire cultures have been melted away by the attractiveness of the Western lifestyle and much of this has been from the other cultures own desire to be like us. It’s been a sad hypnosis and much beauty in the world has succumbed to the siren’s song of sameness.

As the terrorist organizations are hunted down and squashed, we’ll be given a chance…another chance… to learn something. Although the specter of terrorism clouds our vision at the moment, there is another world out there that’s not American, not Western, and not Methodist, Catholic or Presbyterian. Since we will win this war, we’ll be given another chance to simply understand.

September 11th gave us a sudden introduction to the world of geography and history and culture. And as we enter this Christmas season and beyond, we’ll be given a chance to learn from this world that’s come crashin’ uninvited into our celebrations. If we care enough to simply learn, we’ll find a very large world where the size of the Sport Utility Vehicle, the square footage in the house, and the price of the basketball shoes has very little meaning. The number of your golf handicap has very little importance on most of this planet. Making the cheerleading squad isn’t a big concern to most of this world. We have been given a chance to learn a lot.

I’m pretty sure that God and Aunt Bertha were on the same page.

You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door, but you’ll enjoy the trip.