Ruminations on the Fourth

From Native activists who call it the "farce", to Vicksburg who refused to celebrate it for many decades, to those who yawn as it passes and those who celebrate with passion and glee...one who is open and interested can be perplexed. Good friends caution us to avoid nation-worship and some churches 'observe' the fourth by engendering near-disdain.

What gives? Is it wrong to love country? Because Jefferson owned slaves is the progeny of his ideas forever poisoned? Because our forbears were not 'evangelical Protestant like me' can we not consider that in some appropriate and meaningful sense we began as a Christian nation? Could we somehow imagine that perhaps the good outweighed the bad? Could we believe there is something like exceptional, that against all odds we achieved it in some fashion, and rejoice in that without condescension?

Sometimes I decide I do not know anything. And maybe that is good. I truly admire the scholars, those who really understand and know and help us think straight. I also know they, like me, have assumptions that mislead.

Here's where I stand. I want to love my country, and I do. I am aware of and pained by her faults. I do not do enough to fix them -- who does? But I'm done with the guilt trip and shame that quashes love. I do love this country -- even the government that is a necessary evil. And I try to live my life in quiet and peace, observing the ethics and ideas that portend to peace and stability.

I'm weary of the outlook eclipsed by fault-finding such that beauty and joy and love are lost.

I love my country again, and I hope you do, too.