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“Options Unlimited—Closed”

That was the message that just crawled across the bottom of my television screen as outside the snow falls. I laughed out loud at the irony in the message. Are we misleading our children and setting them up for discouragement when we tell them their options are unlimited, that they can do anything they set their mind to, that they can be anything they want to be? I like the way Booker T. Washington framed his rise from slavery to becoming a great scientist: “I have been a slave once in my life—a slave in my body. But I have since resolved that no inducement and no influence would ever make me a slave in soul.” The fact that Washington did it proves that it can be done; it does not, however, mean that everyone who passionately wants to, can or will.

When another crawl announced “Dare to Dream—Closed” I got one more chuckle. I do not know what business that is, but I do know that when our daring to dream shuts down, we are of all people most to be pitied. A few minutes ago I learned that Church of the Open Door was also closed.

I think of Susan Griffin’s account of the behavior of poet Robert Desnos in the concentration camp. When guards and other condemned men were marching to the gas chamber in stony silence, Desnos suddenly grabbed the palm of one of the condemned and read the woman’s palm. He exuberantly told her that she had a very long lifeline and would have many children, grandchildren, great joy, and long life. He moved down the line reading the palms of fellow prisoners and guards alike and saw a great future for all of them. The guards were so taken aback that they loaded the condemned people back into the trucks and drove them back to their barracks. Desnos ultimately died of typhus shortly after the liberation of the camp.29

When churches with names like Resurrection and New Hope and Open Door are marked Closed, we may all be in big trouble.