Hope for a Better America!

Tomorrow is the 4th of July. We celebrate the birth of America. Fireworks. BBQs. The birthing of the country is still very much on my mind lately. Recent events, highlight long ago events. The birthing is also an evolving.

Some of us want to "go back" to simpler times. Those folks are deluded. There never were simpler times. Times always have been difficult. The difficulties are always changing. And we are always evolving - as human beings, as societies, culturally, physically, psychically.

For some of the lucky ones, our early lives may have seemed simpler, more innocent, but that's because we were children, doing children things. As soon as we "grew up" we realized that that innocent state was a bubble. A false paradise. Welcome to the world Bunky!

So change. And more change. You can go with the change, or change with the change. Anyway, I am not the first to point out that our country was born from slavery and genocide. The states rebelled against a King, benefited from the economic engine of human slavery, and decimated the native people who lived here.

So that's part of America, a big part of it. And that old history is still very much alive today. Check out the "paragraph on slavery that never made it into the Declaration of Independence."

And then check out the latest headlines over the last few months. There is a continuum.

And as the great John A. Powell points out on Krista Tippet's program On Being - "Race is like gravity, experienced by all, understood by few."

And we must remember that slavery is not the history of black people, it is a history of America, of all of us, of white people and brown people too. All people. And genocide is not Native American history, it is history of America. A history of white people. A history of those who suffered and those who caused the suffering.

Love this - 3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake! If we didn't rebel against England, slavery would have ended sooner, the genocide may not have occurred, and our system of government would have been better. So when we celebrate the 4th, we celebrate a fatal misstep!

And those wounds never quite heal. There is no way to erase them. They are always with us. So when we celebrate the birth, we celebrate death too. And remember the injustice and pain. And honor those who have fallen. And hope for a better America tomorrow.