Book of the week: Imagining America

WASHINGTON, April 30 (UPI) -- "Imagine: What America could be like in the 21st century" is the collective response to the question, "What could America be like in 50 years?" posed by best-selling author and head of the largest Unity Church in America, Marianne Williamson.

Williamson unites gifted Americans who are experts in their fields to create a positive future for America. Unlike other "What If" books, "Imagine" (414 pages, Rodale Press) offers specific changes we can each make in our personal lives.

Each of the authors has given essays to the book as a gift to raise funds for the Global Renaissance Alliance. The organization is dedicated to imagining and working toward a better world. Its mission is to make a stand in our local, national and global communities for the role of spiritual principles in solving the problems of the world. The group calls this work the "new activism."

In America, we have the world's largest prison population, exceeding both China's and the former Soviet Union's gulag, according to Paul Hawken, co-author of "Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution." He goes on to say we need not turn away from such difficult information. It's all in how you see it. You can see the world as doomed and fatally flawed or see every trend and statistic as a possibility for transformation.

Hawken believes in the "sustainability movement," which includes non-governmental organizations, foundations, and citizen groups addressing social and ecological sustainability. He says in the future of America, "self-sufficiency is a human right, the means to kill people is not a business, but a crime, America is a place where families do not starve, where fathers can work, where children are never sold and where women cannot be impoverished because they choose to be mothers." It will be an America that can "see."

Paul Roth, author of the political best-seller "A Reason To Vote," and founder of the Fair Election Commission, states that the adage "all politics is local" is true, as is "all political transformation is personal." He envisions the transformation of the political process so that in 50 years, gone will be the days of money-driven politics, slanderous campaign ads, and the sense that our votes truly did not count.

In 2050, instead, everyone votes, campaign seasons are short, and all political parties qualify for the ballot on equal terms. Candidates don't really have to run against an opponent; they run on their own platforms, and their own records. The spirituality and politics movement catches fire and honorable candidates run for office and are able to remain honorable. Sounds like pie-in-the-sky to me. But according to Roth, by that time we have come to live one of the greatest scientific truths of all time "we are all one."

An enlightening essay by U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, sums it up with these words, "Each of us can lead in this effort to renew America and enable this nation to take its rightful place as a nation among nations. Our Founders understood that the material foundations of an enduring democracy rest upon the immaterial principles. ... That our journey here on Earth is to carry spiritual principles into the material world, and in spiritualizing the material, our thoughts words and deeds are made holy and we are elevated with them. "It's in how we treat everyone," Kucinich writes. "It is in affirming the humanity of anyone we may view as a enemy, whether across the street or over the sea. None of us will go forward unless we all go forward together, united as Americans."

John Bradshaw is an expert on family relationships and a best-selling author of many books, including "Healing the Shame that Binds You." He predicts that in the future we will see the end of people relating through force, blind obedience, dictatorship and violence. He lists what he calls survival necessities for the "Amazing Trip Into The Next Millennia, which will include Toleration For Error, Ambiguity And Above All Diversity Backed By A Sense Of Humor." He suggests, simply, that we can create a better future by changing the way we parent our children.

John Gray, a family counselor well-known for his book "Men are Mars, Women are from Venus," continues this theme by providing five simple messages that he says allows us to raise cooperative, confident and compassionate children.

(1) Its OK to be different

(2) Its OK to make mistakes

(3) Its OK to express negative emotions

(4) Its OK to want more

(5) Its OK to say no

Gray calls the use of these messages "positive parenting" and then goes on to say, "Every chance that we have to speak to our children is our opportunity to touch the future."

The unprecedented changes happening in American are catapulting the nation to a time of transformation. The United States has the opportunity to release itself from the crippling fear of the future and the baggage of her past indiscretions, to emerge light-filled and free to a new era.

The essays in "Imagine" are profound visions of the future that are infused with power and light of possibilities for the purpose of placing America on the path to the future. Past visionary Katherine Lee Bates sums it up when she wrote:

O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife,

Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life!

America! America!

May God thy gold refine, Till all success be nobleness And every gain divine!