Hope opens the path
Reflection on the 250th Anniversary of US Independence
“Nobody is free until everybody’s free.” Fannie Lou Hamer reminds us that there is still work to do on this Grand Experiment.
This week the memory of a specific Fourth of July celebration kept popping up. Not the 225 anniversary, it was the year the Statue of Liberty’s renovation completed. 1986. I imagined that th 250th 4th of July would be a massive celebration bigger than what we were seeing for Lady Liberty.
The disappointment in this Grand Experiment experienced since that time makes it hard to imagine a brighter future. We’ve outsourced our imagination to the stock market and corporations; to political chameleons and snake oil salesmen.
Perhaps this season, this period of the experiment, calls us to embrace our disappointment fully. If we acknowledge the ways we have been disappointed, and for some harmed, by this grand experiment rather than denying the negative feelings, we can move towards a new vision of hope that includes the era we live in.
Rooting, though, in the perspective of those who signed that Declaration, freedom guided the choice. Freedom remains the undercurrent and flow of the U.S.A. Freedom is the work, hope is the motivation. Fear shuts doors. Hope, though, opens the way, whether it’s a door, a window, or the roof. The way to freedom and actual justice for all persons.
