The End of the Innocence

I went to the movies with a friend today--a place you go to escape for a little while. Our purses were searched. Just over a week after Paris, so I expected it, but it's still sad--this world we live in now. I think our innocence as Americans ended in April of 1995 in Oklahoma City. Every Federal building in this country has cement barriers to keep bomb-laden vehicles at a safe distance. And we don't even notice those barriers anymore--that's the sad part. We voluntarily put up barriers. I visited my high school when I was in town recently and had to ring a buzzer and identify myself and who I was there to see in order to get through the locked doors. We voluntarily lock those doors. I'm not saying we shouldn't, but this is our new normal. And obviously it's not just here. If I say Mumbai, London, Madrid, Paris or Mali, you all know what happened in each of those places. If I mention a suicidal pilot in the alps, a Russian flight from Egypt, a youth camp on a Norwegian island, or bible study in Charleston, you know about those things too. There is no chance of an innocence in the world anymore. I am grateful to have grown up in the 70s and 80s. I think it was a more innocent time. We had pet rocks and mood rings. I could smuggle a 6-pack of beer into Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Maybe I look back through rose-colored glasses. Maybe I just think it was better in a pre-internet world without a 24/7 news cycle. Television used to go off in the middle of the night, for god's sake! Can you imagine that now? I know there have always been bad people: Cain, Judas, John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Hitler. But we still had our freedoms: no one would look in my purse, and I could actually take one to an NFL game. Can't do that now. Our new normal. In that sense we have allowed "them" to win--we have voluntarily given up some of our freedoms. Kids today will never know what it is like to go to a baseball game without passing through a metal detector, they will never walk into an unlocked school, they will never be able to sneak beer into an NFL game. My favorite quote is from Benjamin Franklin--and I'm sure he couldn't even imagine how prescient these words would be today: 'Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.' As Thanksgiving Week dawns for us, we should be grateful for what we have, and pray we don't voluntarily give up what we have left. Peace!