I like listening to podcasts and favorite songs when I drive, but a few days ago, I made the mistake of turning on the radio, just in time to hear this pronouncement from Stephen Miller, one of the most grotesque and hateful characters in politics: “America’s doors are closed.”
What an ugly and un-American sentiment! It sounds particularly dissonant as we approach the designated birthday of our nation.
Happy birthday, America, you great unfinished symphony, as Lin-Manuel Miranda described it in Hamilton. We have always been deeply flawed, but aspirational and self-correcting over time. The long arc of the moral universe (and our own history) bends toward justice, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said.
But not without our help.
Now our nation has been highjacked, but we haven’t forgotten who we are. We are people from everywhere, and we care about each other. You sent for me. You let me make a difference.
When my Italian grandfather arrived at Ellis Island in July 1905, he surely glimpsed the Statue of Liberty lifting her lamp beside the golden door: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free….
He worked hard and made a life here, and I travel through my own life with this awareness. It is a legacy that fosters gratitude, humility, and compassion. As in these lyrics by Paul Simon, “I’ve been given all I wanted, only three generations off the boat. I’ve harvested and I’ve planted. I’m wearing my father’s old coat.”
I wear the old coat, and I carry the stories, and all around me, I see hardworking people who have come here for the same reasons. A few days ago, three diligent workers were clearing brush and digging the ground to form a dry creek bed in our yard. It’s a way to prevent erosion and manage stormwater runoff, but in this case, it was also a work of art. While they worked, the air was filled with Mexican music, and the fragrance of freshly cut brush wafted in through my open window, and I cannot describe how much joy it gave me. I don’t speak Spanish, but I went outside and managed a gracias, for their labor and their spirit.
None of this is unusual. We are a symphony of many languages and songs, and we are built with many hands, leaning into one another. I cannot understand the default assumption that these are bad people deserving of punishment. I cannot forgive the cruelty and hypocrisy we are witnessing today, nor the brazen corruption, stupidity, and vulgarity. Meanwhile, programs vital to the health and well-being of all Americans have been slashed to benefit the obscenely rich, and hard-won measures that were put in place to protect our very planet have been overturned. Happy birthday, America.
Our local group of resistance singers have been holding a morning practice in preparation for our upcoming participation in our town’s Fourth of July parade, walking along a back street, singing. One of the songs we have been practicing is “America the Beautiful,” whose lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates in 1895. I am especially intrigued by its ornate, old-fashioned second stanza:
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
Those pilgrim feet come from many shores, and I personally relate to the impassioned stress, but the lack of self-control in the upside-down kingdom and the mounting failures of Court and Congress to confirm liberty in law are alarming indeed.
And yet, I am brimming with music and friendship and hope, and I still believe we will get our America back on track. Now that the flaws (to be mended less by God than by our human efforts) are more conspicuous than ever, perhaps we can reinvent a better version, rather than trying to replicate what has been broken or lost.
It will not be easy, but I know we can do it, because our forebears bequeathed to us their values, strength, and bravery, and I see good people all around me trying to make things better. I have heard it suggested that on the Fourth of July we proclaim a Declaration of Interdependence. It’s an idea that makes sense to me. We are nothing in isolation, but together, we are mighty.
So, bring on the fireworks, bring on the singing, bring on the parade. It is this resolve, this unshakeable commitment, that I will be celebrating.
We’re here. We are community. And there’s music in us.
