Life in New Perfectville

celebrationauctionWhen my husband and I were at lunch today

I heard in my mind a soft voice say

“Why don’t we  move to a land faraway

Just start all over and do nothing  but play?”

Again, the soft voice spoke in my ear

And because I am old it was harder to hear.

This time some words  made me stop still

They said “Let’s call the place New Perfectville.”

The first thing we need is a list of some rules

To be followed in businesses, churches,  and schools.

The main one, the first one, and hardest to do

Will be that no walls separate me and you.

Old walls must come down, and the first one to go

Will be to erase all the ‘hurt’ words we know,

The words that make one person tremble in fear

Just knowing that the user of that word is near.

Those words are unpleasing to the Father Above

Who set out to make us all Beings of Love.

So into the furnace, those hurt words we send

Soon the ashes are scattered in a cool healing wind.

When those words of hatred no longer exist

We seekers of harmony go on with the list

And because all the hurt words were easy to burn

We thought of another good rule we could learn.

Let’s sit in the old campfire circle and play

An old fashioned game, that back in the day,

Was guessing whose hand touched our head in the dark

We played this at night in our yards for a lark.

While we sit in the darkness the silence is thick

But shortly we all have unraveled the trick.

Now our list has a new rule and gets a checkmark

For we are all the same color when we are in the dark.

The trick to this rule is suspend disbelief

And make no allowance to cause any grief

For in daylight all colors are going to show

And we must not permit old resentments to grow.

Rule three is another conundrum to solve

And more than one sun’s trip rise will need to revolve

To put this important new rule to the test

We must choose as our leader the ultimate best.

With the three simple rules for our New Perfectville

There will only be one final pledge to fulfill.

To honor and follow the dreams from our past

What shall we do to make sure those dreams last?

Once more I could hear that small voice in my mind

But somehow more distant, yet clearly defined

In a quick review of the rules that would guide us

Our New Perfectville must first live inside us.

No more calling names and deriding each other

Because we should see  we are sister and brother

We are all one, a land  built by our own

And in each of our beings our kinship was sown.

New Perfectville is our land of the free

Belonging as family, to you and to me.

No more should we battle to win a bad game

But rise above trying to relay the blame.

It now became clear that the time has arrived

And we need to pay heed how our land has survived.

We must put aside racisism, insults and hate

And mend our America before it’s too late.

Lou Ellen Brown

Lou Ellen is a 4th generation Texan. She taught high school 43 years in all 5 geographic regions of Texas. She is a Certified Lay Minister in the Methodist Church, and has strong ties to The US Constitution and The Bill of Rights and those rights are not negotiable. Lou Ellen taught secondary, 7th-12th grade, and some freshman college level classes in Texas schools, including English, Spanish, Speech, Theater and Civics. She was also girls' basketball one year. She says she intended to be a writer, "and my half-novel is still waiting, as is my book of poetry." Lou Ellen is very active in her community and recently completed her second term as president of the Sesame Literary Club. She is retired and participates in the Texas Retired Teacher Association, and teaches an adult class in the First United Methodist Church of Hughes Springs. Lou Ellen and her husband, Gene, attended a Tea Party bus stop rally where they were thrilled to meet and get a photo with Lloyd Marcus. "We are Republicans of the old fashioned variety," Lou Ellen says.

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