Faith: Our forefathers taught us well; we must stand up for our beliefs

Now is the time ...

... for all good men to come to the aid of their country!

I have written this statement at least 10,000 times. I learned it in my unsuccessful attempts to learn to type. Then I used it to test my handwriting — writing it with various pens to see what produced the most pleasing form of my handwriting. I never knew why I was doing this, but now I know.

Like the author Patrick Henry, one of my grandfathers was also a governor of one of the colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence. Stephen Hopkins, who shares my same birthday, March 7, was the governor of Rhode Island when he traveled to Philadelphia in 1776 to be one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Another grandfather, F. A. Hopkins, a self-taught eastern Kentucky lawyer, was chosen by his peers to write the Constitution for the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1890.

I was taught from a very early age to revere these two men. I’ve done that.

In 1994 I was in a sweat lodge with a well-known Lakota Sioux medicine woman, Kay Lynn (Two Trees) Sullivan, in Taos, New Mexico. I was the last of five persons to leave the sweat lodge. Before I left, Two Trees asked me to open my eyes in the pitch dark of the lodge and tell me what I saw. I was sure I would only see darkness. I opened my eyes and was stunned to see thousands of bright stars.

When I told her what I was seeing she said, ”Those stars are your grandfathers, and if you will say to them, now, ‘Grandfathers, I will keep you with me always’, they will be with you always.” I said that three times and when I got out of the total darkness of the lodge and looked at the black sky at 7,000 altitude feet in the New Mexico desert, there they all were, thousands and thousands of them — my grandfathers, with whom I now had a connection.

I have never doubted that my grandfathers are with me. I was not surprised, nor did I doubt that they were coming to me from time to time to answer my questions about my life’s direction.

Both of these men have come to me recently. These wise and accomplished leaders of men urge me to speak out. And they smiled when I realized I have been writing what to say, as practice, all my adult life.

Now is the time for ALL good men to come to the aid of our country.

This is the moment you and I have known was coming. This is our moment. This is a call now, for all good men to stand up in the aid of our country.

This political divide is more complex, more difficult, and more dangerous than any our country has ever faced. More dangerous than our revolution, our civil war, our two world wars, our incursion into Vietnam or our civil rights experience.

We are now at that moment when history and our country’s destiny are totally at stake. This is no longer a stand-by-and-watch-it-on-TV-moment.

If you are a father, a veteran, a Mason, a clergy member, a civic leader, a scholar, or a common man or woman like myself, you already know in your heart that all of our grandfathers are calling us, right now, to accept our destiny, which they worked so hard for us to receive.

And what is our destiny? R. Lee Sharp wrote this in the 1880’s:

"Isn’t it strange how princes and kings, and clowns that caper in sawdust rings, and common people like you and me are builders for eternity? Each is given a bag of tools, a shapeless mass, a book of rules; and each must make — ere life is flown — a stumbling block rr a stepping stone."

We are a nation that is having a nervous breakdown. If you doubt that, look around. We are the only ones who can right our faltering ship of state.

Now is the time for all good women and men to bring wisdom, faith and love to all of America.

Chuck Robison is a former Protestant chaplain at the United Nations. He lives in Cedar Park.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Faith: We must stand up for our beliefs