When 'The Guiding Light' Goes to Black this Fall

The popular television show ER just ended its 15-year run. It was around long enough to be considered a staple. The 72-year old show The Guiding Light is considered not only a staple, but an actual institution. However, this fall it too ends. In a young, here-today-gone-tomorrow country, neither finale is a surprise. And yet, all finales are a shock...!

The shock is to the collective nervous system of all those wired into these entities. A program, a place, a person. Endings are never easy. And for all their reputed excitement, changes are never simple. How then to cope?

One way is to see each change inside its larger context. To recognize how it's an organic part of a larger evolving process we often shrug and call, "That's life...!" For example, when The Guiding Light first arrived on radio January 25, 1937, it was a gentle 15-minutes each afternoon which I would hear when I was home sick from school and Mom was in the kitchen preparing dinner. Those too were hard times, and the kindly old minister who opened his non-denominational church in the town of Five Points brought both his townsfolk and his audience the comfort of biblical wisdoms.

As the show wrenched its way with us through the Depression and World War II, its light continued to guide millions of at-home mothers like mine. But then in the post-war television years, The Guiding Light emerged as a much tougher tale of lies, sex and betrayals. Why? Because the context of the show -- America itself -- was growing tougher. If The Guiding Light is an institution about to fade away, it reflects the many other institutions that have also faded during its 72 years.

There's a long list starting with the shrinking role of small communities like Five Points in our lives. The enlarging role of government. The tortured role of marriage and family. Other institutions too have shifted like the unseen tectonic plates beneath earthquakes. The school...the church...the military. Now even our libraries and our banks. While you and I can survive the loss of The Guiding Light, we can't these other institutions. Civilizations hold in place only when the pillars upon which they stand hold in place.

Staying with the metaphor, we can't forget where these institutional pillars come from....! Exactly. From each of us, for each in our own way has been among the artisans who've helped chisel and carve them. And so -- when vital institutions begin to crack and sway -- concerned artisans must face the historic fact that there is no master builder alone who can strengthen them.

I remember back when The Guiding Light was still coming from Mom's kitchen radio. One of the messages we listened to as we saw our institutions buckling under the weight of Depression and War was the evening voice of President Roosevelt. If you replay those long ago fireside chats today, you can sense his recurring theme just like we did: "Together!" We got into this together, now together we can work our way out.

And, my fellow artisans, do you know something...? We did.