Friday, August 10, 2012

America the Beautiful

I just spent a couple of days in Cleveland and it's a pretty interesting town with a lot of potential.

The people are charming and friendly, it feels safer than a lot of other similar-sized cities that I have been to, and there are some great attractions.

I had some good conversations, nice food and saw some lovely spaces.

The ride from the international airport takes you through what seems to be a really down and out part of town. You can see by the boarded up stores, the types of people walking around, and the run down buildings that it's a rough neighbourhood.

But yet, within this clearly downtrodden area, there are churches offering spiritual guidance, daycare services, and what looks to be not-for-profit vocational counseling, and training programs. While in the taxi, we passed by all of these things-the run down stuff, the crumbling amongst the messages of tenaciousness and inspiration-all mixed up together.

You can change your life for the better. It's in your hands.

These were the exhortations from the windows and sandwich boards.

So I had a moment.

It was like a religious experience for me.

Amongst the ruin of the city, in the middle of the mid-West, in the middle of a city and a state facing hard economic times, in the roughest neighbourhood, there were still messages of hope emanating from the churches and from storefronts.

You can change your life for the better. It's in your hands. 

And there, in a split second, was the eternal, hopeful message of the promise of America. The everlasting promise of redemption in the land of the free, home of the brave.

I gasped.

I'm sharing that experience because it was so powerful, and I suspect some of you have similar moments in your lives. I used to have those kind of magical, historical, philosophical, religious convergence moments a lot in Israel-but it does happen to me here in Canada also in various circumstances. Maybe because of the way the sun beams hit my kids at the park, the taste of the berries that they picked from the farm, a song, a few words exchanged with a friend. Those moments are the essence, the pleasure of the human experience.

You can change your life for the better. It's in your hands.

A powerful reminder of the strength of America, one that I hope all Americans treasure-such a gift.

A very precious gift.