July 4…Independence Day…for me today is a day when I remember the dream of America, take stock of where we are in realizing that dream, mourn our shortcomings and hope that in the years to come, we will do more to realize the dream.
Once there was a dream called America; it was a dream of a place where tyrants cannot oppress minorities, where taxes are fair, where people of all origins have opportunity. A dream that if you worked hard, you could build a life, whoever you are. A dream that spread like wildfire across a world that needed hope and liberty.
The dream was born a few hundred years ago. It spread like fire across a world where economic opportunity was hard to find if you weren’t born to it. A dream that your beliefs would be welcomed instead of shunned. A dream that caught the hearts and minds of people who were sidelined socially and economically. The dream that was America inspired others to gift us a great and beautiful symbol; a statue of lady Justice, standing ready to welcome those who are lost, who need a place of their own.
I am utterly in love with the dream of America. I am deeply, profoundly patriotic to that dream.
I am not in love with what that dream has become. I am heart-broken.
Today when I look into the public arena, instead of a conversation about how we can live more fully into that dream of equity, fairness, and opportunity I find a conversation about how we can most ethically reject children whose parents want that dream for them.
Today I find conversation about how to best to secure our borders against a world that dares to pursue our same dream instead of how to responsibly welcome fellow seekers.
Today I hear rhetoric and misdirection from my leaders, tricking my people to advance the most wealthy merchant barons among us into further economic feudalism rather than leaders who seek to uplift all of us and create opportunity for even the most vulnerable among us.
Today when I look into the public arena I find lies, exploitation and entitlement instead of truth, fairness and respect for the other among us.
Today I find leaders who fail to embrace the sacred dream that calls to my bones…a dream of a better way, a dream of liberty, of hope, of welcoming to a world that feels unwelcome. A dream of a promised land where all of the people of creation seek to uplift one-another, rather than exploit one-another.
Today, when I review the vision, mission and purpose of my nation, I find that it has strayed far from the dream I hold sacred. And, in my patriotism, I am deeply, spiritually angry. I am angry to the marrow of my bones.
This is not the dream called America to which I am eternally and utterly devoted with all my heart and soul. This is a perversion of that dream exploited by those who have all they need, but who still, for some demonic reason, want more…
Today I remember the dream, I weep for what I see around me, and I pray to The All that we find a better path through our troubles into that promised land.
Once there was a dream called America…
Today, on this Independence Day, may we remember the dream, and may it’s vision ignite our souls into resistance of tyranny, insistence for more equity and compassion among us, and may we celebrate without compromising our dissatisfaction with the way our world has yet to realize the dream.
Once there was a dream called America…
May it be so.