Happy Birthday, United States of America!
Just wanted to take a moment to say Happy Birthday to our country.
We had lots of plans for the 4th, but, alas, the heat is so high here that nearly everything is canceled.
Still, they cannot cancel the joy in our hearts, our pride in our country having survived thus far despite all the strikes against it, or our hope for the next 250.
Maybe we’ll settle for watching 1776 again.
If the weather cools a bit next week, we may go visit the fair on the DC Mall. If I do, I’ll post some pictures.
Happy Birthday, everyone, and have a joyful 4th!
I had the wonderful chance to watch 1776 live in our local theater - our opera company put on a really good production. More than half of the audience were wearing red, white, and blue, and I don't think there was a dry eye in the theater when they invited us all to stand and sing the national anthem before the show started.
No personal fireworks - our state is tinder-dry right now - but there was an airshow, and fireworks put on by our city, and a parade in every city and town in the vicinity, just about. At least half of the businesses on Main Street were swathed in bunting and flags. Flags everywhere!
We had a family pancake breakfast, and a cookout, and played a trivia game called Celebrate America. And I took this chance to read the Declaration of Independence.
May our United States of America continue for another 250 years, and beyond, blessed with the wisdom to preserve our liberties and remembering always that our unalienable rights come paired with solemn responsibilities!
Still Becoming
The mountains hug around us.
Older than memory. Older than nations. Older than the names we gave ourselves.
Two hundred and fifty years— a lifetime for a country, a heartbeat for the earth.
History is measured less by years than by what one generation places into the hands of the next.
Many of us carry the memory of wandering.
Perhaps that is why we know the difference between ownership and belonging.
A country cannot be owned. Only cherished. Only tended. Only borrowed for a little while.
We have never been a perfect people. Only human— capable of astonishing kindness and astonishing harm.
Still, tiny flowers bloom between stone and drought.
The desert has never confused hardship with hopelessness.
Each generation is asked:
What did you do with what was entrusted to you?
I hope we recover. I hope we become whole.
May we remember:
the earth does not belong to us.
We belong to the earth.
May we leave this beautiful land more whole than we found it.
And when history calls our names,
may we answer—
Hineni.
Here we are.
Still becoming.
Laurie S. Sherman