How Long? Not Long

Country Parson

A few weeks away for rest and contemplation can be restorative like nothing else. Time away provides the opportunity to decompress—to allow the craziness of the world to pass by unnoticed for a few days so we can return with a fresh, uncluttered mind ready to take on the tasks ahead.

Unfortunately, it does not always work that way. In fact, it may not work that way most of the time, for two reasons. One is personal; the other has to do with the conditions of the reality to which we return.

First, far too many people take a few weeks off for rest and relaxation and manage to accomplish neither. They fill their time with things to do that promise new adventures, new kinds of fun, and pleasures unrestricted by normal standards of prudence and temperance. The result is emotional and physical exhaustion rather than renewal. It is only one example among many variations of the same process lived out in different ways, and you can no doubt think of a few from your own experience.

Even when time away lives up to all expectations, returning home to conditions more chaotic and troubling than the ones left behind can be devastatingly disorienting. I sometimes think it is reality itself that ought to take a few weeks off for the rest and contemplation needed to restore a modicum of sanity.

Thanks to the current president of the United States, we returned to a world in which our beloved nation has been used to inflict what appears to be an unrestricted bombardment of Iran—a country whose leadership has fomented violence throughout the Middle East, often with a special animus toward Israel, but which has posed no serious threat to the United States. It has long been a nuisance to its Arab and Israeli neighbors and a brutal oppressor of its own people. Yet none of that justifies a war with no clear purpose, no clear plan for its conduct, no clear understanding of what an outcome might be, and apparently little concern for the human carnage inflicted on its people—or for the continued deconstruction of a world order that has held the globe in relative peace for nearly a century.

Trump’s lifelong habit has been to keep the blustering and the outrageous flowing, piling one spectacle on top of another without regard for the damage left behind. It has worked well as a scheme for accumulating wealth while evading accountability for a trail of misdemeanors and felonies. In something like a Ponzi scheme, each new outrage must be large enough to displace public reaction to the previous one.

The process has now reached the predictable moment when engaging in an unjustified war involving multiple nations—and utterly destroying America’s remaining credibility—becomes the only move left for a desperate man who knows his time is nearly up.

So much for returning from a few weeks of rest and restoration.

Oddly enough, it is also a moment of renewed hope. The majority of the American public appears to be fed up with him. Leadership among our Western allies is fed up with him. Putin, Xi, and the other strongman figures he admires gloat over the advantages handed to them by his foolishness and floundering. The lunatic fringe of the far right has grown louder and angrier even as it has become smaller and less influential. Even the moral cowards in the Senate and House are probing for the right moment to disengage in a show of righteous indignation.

How long must we wait?

Not long.

On March 25, 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to those who had marched from Selma to Montgomery in defiance of injustice and violence. His words became known as the “How Long? Not Long” speech. In closing, he called on ordinary people to continue their work with courage and determination in the cause of what is right, good, and just.

King ended with words that still resonate today:

“How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, because you shall reap what you sow.
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
—Martin Luther King Jr., Montgomery, Alabama, March 25, 1965