THE LAST RIVER MILE

Our great nation is 250 years old this year. I’ve been struggling with exactly how to celebrate this. It’s sounds mundane, but I’ve even been stuck on what to wear on July 4th.

I love this country, and I’m thankful beyond words for the gift of being a citizen here. Founders built this republic on the values of freedom and justice, equally available for all. We’ve had rough chapters in our history since 1776, but I believe we exist to continue living into those values.

However, there is considerable evidence that we are slipping backward on this important journey. For example voting rights for non-white citizens once again are in danger, with court backing for this backward step. Authoritarian leadership seems determined to carry the day; the very thing our country’s founders fought to eliminate. Too many of our leaders are fueling xenophobia, when we are by definition a melting pot nation. (An old meme says, “Unless your ancestors could field dress a buffalo, you came from immigrants; documented or not.”) Persons in authority increasingly do not want us to face and learn from the dark chapters in our history. (Very few of you learned of the sanctioned destruction of Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street” in your schooling.) There are those who want to mandate a very narrowly defined “Christian” nationalism, in the very country established on the principle of freedom of religion. (Legislated faith is no faith at all.)

To make matters worse, these things about which I am concerned are regarded as “patriotic” in the belief of many. How do I celebrate two and half centuries of the United States of America without signaling any kind of support for much of this direction in which our country is headed currently?

Then I found it…A T-shirt with a poem across a background of the Statue of Liberty and the American Flag. Here is the poem:

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” (Emma Lazarus.)

That’s it. That’s who we are. I am here because of what is valued in those words. Most of us are. This is the real American dream. This is what we should celebrate. This is the heartbeat of our nation, still beating in spite of it all.

That’s what I’ll be wearing on July 4th. Happy 250th, U.S.A.!

I’ll see you around the next bend in the river.