Longing for Fall

            Here we are in mid-September in Tennessee.  Everyone is ready for fall.  Anytime I log into social media, I see a trend.  People are despairing that fall seems to be nowhere around.  The calendar says mid-September, but the temperature says early August.  With highs in the 90s each day, it is more difficult to get excited about pumpkins, mums, and fall festivals.  And going to a football game before sunset feels equivalent to sitting on the sun.  We are dreaming about the brisk mornings, sweatshirts, and fall-themed coffee drinks.  We are looking forward to watching the trees change color and eventually give way to the force of nature that causes their leaves to fall to the ground.  The changing, dying, and hope of renewal in the spring await us outside.  And we want to see it all.  And as much as it seems right now like it may never come – it will.  It will come, and the cycle will continue.  And in March we will be thirsty for spring. 

            This year I find myself longing for fall in the depths of my soul.  I really love fall.  It is my favorite season by far.  If ragweed were eliminated from the earth, it would be downright perfect.  I love the coziness it brings.  The holidays and hayrides, the fall sports, the gratitude, the pumpkin bread, the beautiful leaves – they are all so amazing.  But this year as I wait to watch the leaves turn and give way and let go, I find myself pondering all the things I want to let go of in the coming fall season.  With the trees as my inspiration and partners, I want to drop some leaves and make way for new growth.

I want to drop my insecurities, the voice in my head that tells me I’m not enough.  I want to drop the trauma that made that voice infinitely louder and refuse to let it define me.  I want to drop allegiance to the systems that gave me a false notion of who I am.  I want to drop any version of myself that paints me as anything other than a loved child of God, created in his image.  I want to drop my self-doubt and second-guessing.  I want to drop my fear of what people will think when I drop my leaves - because holding onto dead leaves won’t nourish anyone.  I want to drop my need to explain myself over and over and over again.  I want to drop my tendency to apologize incessantly when it isn’t warranted.  I want to drop my tendency to look in the mirror and wish I looked differently.  I want to drop the tendency to fear people and ideas that are different than what I know.  I want to drop the constant temptation to tend to everything except the breathing of my soul.  I want to drop resentment.  I want to drop the picture in my mind of how things are supposed to be and the notion that I have to make everything perfect.  I want to watch these leaves fall from the trees.  And then I want to rake them up.  I want to jump in them and play and laugh at the fact that I’m not carrying them anymore.  I want to make leaf angels and pile them over my head, so I can jump out and shout.  I want them to know that they no longer have power over me, but rather that I can smile at the ways they have opened up the opportunity for growth in the spring.  And then I want to bag them up and send them on their way. 

            And when spring comes, and it will come, I want to grow back new leaves.  I want to grow back leaves that are vibrant and nourishing.  One leaf will be called confidence.  Another will be called peace.  There will be leaves of self-love and self-acceptance.  There will be a leaf called courage.  There will be leaves of more encompassing compassion and love for others.  There will be leaves of speaking up when necessary and not being embarrassed to take up space in the world.  There will be leaves of education and empowerment that I will spread across other people who desperately need them.  There will be leaves of new ideas and new experiences.  There will be a leaf of self-compassion and a leaf of perpetual hope.  There will be the beautiful leaf of communion with God, and really, I guess that is the root system of the whole tree.  And in the spring, when I have grown these new leaves, I will create oxygen that is clean and new and needed.  I will be able to breathe new and full, and my breathing will give breath to those around me.  And the leaves I carried before the fall, they will be a memory, an important part of my journey, and a reminder that things are always being made new.  And when I see one of those leaves on someone else’s tree, I will love them and know that I once carried that leaf too. 

A Letter to Myself on the Day of My Baptism

           

          Twenty-eight years ago today I walked down the aisle during the “invitation song” at church and asked to be baptized.  I had spent the previous week at church camp.  I remember that we learned about the “Armor of God” in Ephesians 6 that week.  I think something about the power and the courage that passage called out spoke to me.  I was a quite passive and fearful child.  At the age of (barely) 10, I decided that I wanted to walk with Jesus for the rest of my life.  I remember my Dad baptizing me.  I remember my mom and miss Betsy helping me get ready.  I remember the 1990’s denim dress I was wearing that day.  And I remember when I walked out of the front of the church building after getting dressed again that our preacher, Mr. Keith, smiled at me with his always genuine smile and said, “Well, do you feel cleaner?”  He meant metaphorically of course.  And I remember being a little confused.  At that point in my life, the worst thing I had done was a couple of years earlier when I stole a few pretty crafting stones from one of the stations at VBS.  I know - how wrong to commit my first crime at VBS!  I carried the guilt and agony about that one around for a long time, so I was glad to know I had washed that moment of insanity off.  But honestly, I didn’t fully understand the dark side of humanity or the deep need of redemption all around me.  But I knew I loved Jesus, and I knew I wanted to walk with him.  That part has never changed. 

            Some people have strong feelings about whether or not children should be baptized, and I guess it all depends on your starting point.  If faith in God is seen as an intellectual assent, then children may not be intellectually ready to make a lifelong decision or to sign onto a distinct theology.  But if faith is seen as holistic and spiritual, I tend to believe that children are able to grasp it more easily than adults.  After years of working with children, I am convinced that they understand and experience God on a level that adults rarely achieve because of our life experiences and intellectual attempts to explain God. 

            Today, as I close my eyes and try to connect with that 10-year-old little girl with a fire in her heart for Jesus, there are a few things I want to tell her.  So I am writing a letter to that little dreamer. 

Dear 10-year-old girl,

I want you to know that, yes, you are ready to make this decision.  You know God and experience him, and you are ready to make the decision to follow him.  But I also want to tell you that your walk with God started before you were born.  You didn’t have to be baptized before he would start working in your life.  He has been there with you every moment. I’m so glad that you want to follow him.  The innocence of faith and connection with God that you have now will be hard to maintain as you experience more life.  Don’t let it go easily.  He won’t let go of you. 

            Dear 10-year-old girl, I want you to know that faith is a journey that will take twists and turns you might not expect.  Faith is often treated like a destination.  But that is actually religion.  Religion says, “arrive at this belief, and your work is finished.”  Faith is a continuous walk with a loving God.  It has mountains and valleys.  You will find that things you once believed will fail the test of life and love.  You will find that things you once doubted will become clearly evident over time.  Twenty-eight years from now, you will have more questions than you have answers.  You will have given up on formulas and checklists.  You will realize the arrogance of anyone who claims to fully understand the things of God.  You will find that the deeper your faith in the greatness of God becomes, the smaller your need for a tidy theology becomes.  You will become more and more at peace with your questions because as Father Richard Rohr says, “The opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is control.”  You will learn a lot in your 30’s about the elusive and deceptive nature of “control.”  And as you let go of the illusion of control, you will feel more secure in the presence of God than you ever have before.  You will find that he’s not afraid of your questions. 

            It will take you a while, but eventually, you will learn to see the image of God in everyone.  You won’t only see him in the people at church.  You will see him at the grocery store check-out, in the prison, at the park, on the news, in the person who hurt you, and in the person who disagrees with you.  You will become increasingly sensitive to the tragedy of any human who is being treated as anything less than one who is created in the image of God.  And you will understand more and more that no one of us bears his image any more than another.  It is equally written onto our DNA.  When we turn away from goodness, when our darkest moments surface, we have simply lost touch with our inherent God-image.   We can help others find that image of God that is planted within them if we love them purely, because that is when his image is most evident in our own lives.  We can call that out in others by encouraging them and being honest about our own failures.  As Thomas Merton said, “Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.”  The world needs real people.  Be as real as you can be, trusting the God-image within you.  

Dear 10-year-old girl, you will go through years where it is hard to see your own worth.  I wish I could guard you from that pain.  I wish I could silence the voices that will demean you for your gender, your stature, your intellect, your personality, your choices.  Those voices will sometimes drown out the small still voice within you that reminds you of your lovability.  Remember that when people treat you this way, they have lost touch with their own God-image.  Eventually, you will be secure enough to know your own worth again, just like you do now.  And in a lot of ways, you will finally feel like that 10-year-old girl again.  And it will be beautiful.

            Dear 10-year-old girl, you have ahead of you so much beauty and so much pain.  They will intertwine so tightly that sometimes you won’t be able to unthread them.  Some days you will wish you could avoid the pain, but others you will know that you are uniquely you because of what you have endured.  And the beauty in your life will be absolutely breathtaking in contrast to the pain.  And believe it or not, you will even find a way to turn the pain into beauty when you release it to the one who has walked with you since before you were born.  Pain does not get the final word, sweet child.  Love does.  And that is why today you made a wonderful decision.  You don’t fully know what it means.  You don’t know what it will look like to walk with Jesus.  You don’t know just how faithful he will be to you.  But he will never leave you.  Now rock that wet hair and denim dress and get some hugs from the people who love you.  You’ve got a journey to continue.  And it’s going to be amazing. 

A Year of Becoming

              As 2018 draws to a close and a New Year looms near, I find myself reflecting on 2018 and things I have learned.  It has been a year of immense change and growth, a year of immense pain and intense hope.  I didn't know you could have so much peace in the midst of so much pain or so much hope in the midst of so much uncertainty.  We tend to see these things as mutually exclusive, but they are not.  This year taught me so much about the beauty of authenticity.  I learned this year that when you become vulnerable and honest, you experience a freedom in living that is beyond compare.  The process is painful, like walking through fire and feeling the unnecessary things burn off.  But the reward is great.  When you lay out your cards and stop playing the “everything’s okay” game two things will likely happen.  Some people will be upset that you had the nerve to acknowledge the truth.  You will lose relationships that you never thought you would lose (or wanted to lose).  But this is not the end of the story.  Because when you show your true, authentic self and stop trying to hide the broken pieces of your story, something else happens as well.  The people who truly love you will love you in a way that is more precious than any love you have ever known.  Because now you are giving them the chance to love the real you – all of you.  Not the putting on your best face and pretending everything is good “you”, but the face in the mud dealing with your reality “you”.  You find out that there are people in your life who will hold your hand through your most difficult days and laugh with you when laughter is desperately needed.  You find that some people can accept and love you even if things look messy.  You will grieve the ones who couldn’t love the authentic you.  But you will learn to truly value the relationships that stand the test of authenticity.  And when you are finally at peace with being authentic and real – you will learn to love yourself fully as well.  And suddenly, when you love yourself and you have the freedom to be real, it doesn’t really matter that your honesty is not okay with everyone. 

              Many Christians live their lives in fear of being broken.  We think if there is a bruise on our story, we become less beautiful to God.  I might have said before this year that God’s love was not about my performance.  I might have intellectually believed that was true.  But I didn’t really believe it until this year.  This year I learned in my soul and in the deepest parts of my being that God’s love for me transcends every part of my story.  I have felt his love for me in the most precious ways in the most needed moments.  He has whispered to me over and over again “You are okay, and I am here.”  And those words he has spoken to my heart over and over again have gotten me out of bed in the morning.  There’s something about being honest with God and saying, “I’m at the end of myself here” that allows him into your life in places that he is not welcome as long as you are saying “I’ve got this”.  As a parent, I want desperately for my children to be able to come to me with any situation and be authentic and real.  How beautiful it must be to God when he sees his children live out of their truest selves, refusing to hide from him or anyone else.  I am learning to entrust my story to him completely.  It will not look like the one I wrote in my head and in my heart.  But while grieving the loss of a dream, there is the hope of a future that only God holds.  There is a faith in redemption and a joy in knowing that no matter where life leads – he is there.  And that means it will be good.

              To anyone reading this – I encourage you in the coming year to strive to be authentic.  Be brave enough to be honest with yourself and others about the truth of your life.  Live in freedom, not in bondage to the need for approval.  We can spend our entire lives worshipping the god of approval, which leads to an empty existence full of shallow relationships.  Or we can be authentic and real and live our best lives in truth.  We can love and be loved wholeheartedly.  Authenticity does not come cheaply, nor is it the path of least resistance.  But it is invaluable, and it is the path of most radiance. 

No Room in the Inn

“No room in the inn.”  These words are echoing in my heart and mind today.  They are haunting me.  They are challenging me.  “No room.  No room.”  I started out my day by reading a news story about migrant children having tear gas sprayed in their direction at the border.  “No room in the inn.”  It is the Christmas season.  We are celebrating the birth of Jesus.  And all I can think about is his parents being told there was no room for them in Bethlehem.  The Savior of the world was turned away.  A mother in labor, sent to a stable. 

              I can’t stop thinking about those children at the border – barefoot, hungry, scared, desperate.  And are a small percentage of the migrants at the border acting foolishly?  Sure.  But don’t pretend to know how foolishly you would behave if you were absolutely desperate for safety and security for your children.  And we are the gatekeepers.  We get to sit in our warm homes or offices and shop cyber-Monday deals today while real people cry out for help at our border.  And our President tweets about them like they are dogs.  Being born an American is a privilege that I did nothing to deserve.  And no one in that caravan chose which nation they would be in when they breathed their first breath.  I do not pretend to have all the answers on issues of immigration.  I know laws and systems are required.  But I do know this.  EVERY SINGLE desperate migrant at our border is a human being, made in the image of God.  And that baby who was born all those years ago – the one we are all celebrating right now – he came for each one of them.  His mother, Mary, sang the following words about God while he was tossing about in her womb:

“He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.  He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.  He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.”

And Jesus’ first recorded words to a crowd in the book of Luke would be these:

              “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

              And today in the United States of America people who claim to pattern their lives after this Jesus will cheer “Build a wall!”  and “Send them back where they came from!” and “They’re not our problem!”  They will retweet the President’s accusations that the people at the border are criminals and demand that we close our borders to everyone seeking asylum from unimaginable circumstances.  After all, our well-being is more important than the well being of “those people” because we just happen to be Americans.  And all I can picture today when I close my eyes are those beautiful, brown-skinned, brown-eyed, barefoot, exhausted children standing at our border and being told “There’s no room in the inn.  And we aren’t offering you a stable.”  And I just can’t help but think “Do we understand Christmas at all?”

A Poem for the Women who Grieve

A little girl alone in the dark, clinging to her teddy bear. 

The only man she’s ever trusted said it was because he loved her.

I wonder why she didn’t tell.

A teenage girl on her first date, new outfit, new freedom, new self.

He forced himself on her, pretended she asked.

I wonder why she didn’t tell.

A college student at her first party, just getting to know her new friends

She got to know one more than she ever wanted.

I wonder why she didn’t tell.

A middle-aged woman working long hours, making a name for herself.

He said if she told he would end her career.

I wonder why she didn’t tell.

Each time we ask why, we ignore a deep cry, an immense groan from women who grieve. 

We re-victimize and re-traumatize, when we trivialize the impact on their lives. 

And the shame it just grows, and it grows. 

And we wonder why she didn’t just tell someone, when it happened, when things could be done.

But what we can’t feel is the pain that she holds and the fear that unfolds if she says what she knows. 

Asking a victim why she didn’t tell and portraying her story as false, is like walking into a hospital room and kicking the sick in the face. 

She is hurting and broken, can’t forget what was taken, especially if everyone knows. 

So, she’s brave and she’s strong, tries to just carry on, but the pain it just grows and it grows. 

When she finally tells, the attacks they will come, from people who she’d never thought. 

She’ll hide all her thoughts, submit to the boss -the culture that says that her story is lost. 

And she’ll sit once again with the pain that she’s in, and the shame that she carries will scream and will spin.

And she’ll get up each day and she’ll fight for the healing.  Because she is fierce, and-no-she isn’t quitting. 

And her heart it just grows and it grows. 

And if culture won’t hear her, she’ll make herself known

She’ll reach out to the hurting, believe what she’s told.

She’ll stand up for the broken with their hands in hers, ‘cause the world around her can’t decide what she’s worth. 

Her worth wasn’t taken that day or that year, she was victimized, but-no-she won’t live in fear. 

Because fear was the goal and success it was had, but-no-not anymore, that girl’s finally mad.

And that anger will drive her to be all she can, to do all that she will.  And that man he won’t win.  He’s alone on that hill.

Culture and noise may be on his side, but the night that he hurt her a part of him died. 

And nobody wins when we make them be quiet, pretend it’s not happening and loudly deny it. 

Nobody wins, the victim, the thief, the children, the parents-no-EVERYONE weeps. 

And until we admit it and say what is it, the pain will keep coming, again and again.

And everyone loses, the girls and the boys, when will we hear their cries over the noise?

Where is Your Hope?

              I was reading John 5 this morning, and as I came to the end of it I noticed a passage that spoke deeply to me.  In verse 45 Jesus says, “Don’t think that I will accuse you before the Father.  Your accuser is Moses, the one in whom your hope rests.”  I immediately thought about how foolish the people he was addressing must have been.  They had Jesus Christ in their midst, and they had put their hope in Moses, who had long since passed.  The Jews had so heavily invested in the words of Moses.  Their law and scriptures were everything to them.  And this man, Jesus, had come and completely messed with their understanding of things.  They had their rituals, their laws, their systems, their traditions – and then Jesus.  He came in like a whirlwind and questioned all of it.  He brought forth this new system called grace and freedom, and they couldn’t comprehend that he actually was who he said he was.  Just a few verses back they were trying to accuse him for healing a man on the Sabbath day and telling the man to carry his mat.  After all, Moses said keeping the Sabbath was one of the 10 commandments.  Who was this man that said, “Sabbath was created for humans; humans weren’t created for the Sabbath”?  Did he actually go there?  Did he touch that?  Didn’t he know what these people believed and what Moses had said?  These people had placed their hope squarely on Moses and refused to see the salvation and redemption that were quite literally staring them in the face.

              So now I want to talk about Moses as “accuser”.  When Jesus says that Moses is their accuser what could he mean?  Did he mean that Moses set out the laws and the laws were the accusers?  Maybe?  Probably, even.  But this morning when I read it the Spirit spoke something else to me about this passage.  Moses was the accuser because he was where they had misplaced their hope.  As human beings hope is essential.  It is necessary.  We lose the will to live when we run out of hope.  And Jesus is telling these people that he is there in the flesh – their hope right before their eyes.  But letting go of that which has held your hope for a very long time is no small feat.  In fact, many never learn to do it.  And they may want to harm anyone who asks them to re-evaluate things or dares to question their beliefs.  The Pharisees are prime examples of this.  They didn’t just want to dismiss Jesus.  They wanted him dead.  You see, Moses was their accuser because he was stealing their hope from the one true source of life – Jesus Christ.  The people had to be able to take God out of the box they had placed him in (quite literally on their foreheads) and realize that the fulfillment of scripture might not look how they had always expected it would.  The Messiah might not ride in with power and might and destroy the Roman establishment.  He might not save them in the way that they had seen kings “save” nations in the past with military strength and destruction.  He might ride in on a donkey and save his people by being beaten and crucified.  He might defeat Rome by loving its inhabitants even though they were lost.  He might not act like a “king” at all.  The things their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had told them with best intentions may not have been exactly right.  But breaking out of those long-held beliefs and patterns requires an upending of everything you think you know.  It requires a humility beyond belief to be able to look at what “you’ve always thought” and admit that you might have been wrong.  After all, this is their hope you’re messing with.  And fear abounds when hope is at stake. 

              Let’s consider for a moment that we all have “accusers” in our lives.  For the Jews it was the words and laws of Moses.  Their lives completely revolved around them.  What do our lives revolve around?  For some of us it is still an attachment to law and order and a literal interpretation of scripture that requires complete obedience and rule-following in order to receive “grace”.   And those beliefs accuse us because our hope is in them and not Jesus.   But beyond religious ideas, where else do we place our hope?  Sometimes our hope is in how much money we make, how lovely our home is decorated or how well-behaved our kids appear in public (we can hide how they act at home).  Maybe our hope is in our national security, a stable economy or a political candidate.  Perhaps we place our hope in being liked and approved of by everyone we know.  It could be that our hope is in being beautiful, defying the aging process and staying within our "ideal weight".  Maybe we have lost any positive hope, and our hope of continuing to survive is in a beer bottle or on a computer screen, giving us just enough false hope to keep living until tomorrow.  Where is your hope?  Wherever we place our hope, whether in good things or bad, these things become our accusers.  When we read about the accuser in this passage, our religious understanding tends to take us to a place of immediately assuming Jesus is speaking of being accused in an eternal, heaven or hell sense.  But Jesus makes clear time and again that the Kingdom is here with his arrival.  Everything is different.  Our lives and choices are not just about eternity.  We are to be ministers of reconciliation here and now.  His words carry weight both temporal and eternal.  So, when we place our hope in things other than Jesus I submit that the accusation is now.  In misplacing our hope, we are unable to live in the freedom and light that Jesus offers.  If our hope is placed in success, safety, approval, etc. we will constantly be let down.  We are hoping in the inconsistent, the not hope-worthy, the world.  We allow these things to accuse us when we allow the lack of them to steal our joy.  When we cannot sleep at night and use anything we can to numb our pain, our hope has become our accuser.   When we expend all our resources, both physical and emotional, on things that are temporal, our hope becomes our accuser.  When our hope becomes our accuser, we are in a vicious cycle of misery that is hard to break.  But Jesus says, “I have come to set the prisoner free”.  We are chained psychologically and emotionally to these things that can only offer temporary hope.  And Jesus whispers in our ears, “I will not accuse you.  It won’t be me.  I will only free you.  I will only love you.  I will only give you life abundant.  Will you let me?”  Will we accept him for who he is?

Mother of Exiles

I read a New York Times article today about the origins of the song “God Bless America”.  It was written by a man whose family had immigrated to America from Russia when he was a child in order to escape extreme danger.  The words about how he loved his country were straight from the heart of one who would have been lost (at least physically speaking) without her.   And it has me thinking a lot on this fourth of July about our country - how she began, where she has traveled, and where she is now.  The backbone of our nation was a belief that all were created equal and should have the freedom to live and worship as they please.  Equality is at our core.  And so is hospitality.  The poem mounted inside the Statue of Liberty exclaims:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

              “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”  These words echo the meaning of the nation that began those many years ago.  The foresight of our forefathers that self-evident truth proved all men created equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights brings us back to the beginning.  Having faced persecution and danger, the inhabitants of our new land knew that what they had escaped was not life as God intended.  It was broken.  And, so, they set out to create a home that embodied freedom.  And welcoming immigrants who were fleeing treacherous situations was a key part of this mission. 

              We know that even in our early years, our citizens did not always live up to these claimed beliefs.  Just ask the American Indians.  Ask the African slaves.  Smell the blood of the civil war.  It is human nature to taste success and forget from whence one came.  It is the plot of many a good book or movie.  It is the life story of many a celebrity.  It is true for many of us.  And it is true of our nation.  It is entirely too easy to find oneself in a place of comfort and forget the place of discomfort that came before.  It is entirely too easy to become so entrenched in success that you lose the sense of who you are at your core – who you were created to be.  Once one who has struggled finds the pleasure of success, the human nature wants to do everything it can to hang on to that feeling.  One could argue that it is innate, this protective urge.  And in a society that thrives on individuality and the pursuit of individual happiness this package is easy to sell.  But that is when things begin to break.  When love of self becomes greater than love of all, our greatest ideals will be lost.  This is when the war erupts, the church collapses, the marriage fails.  When self-protection from perceived threats overshadows the desire to “lift our lamp beside the golden door” for the “tempest-tossed” we stray from lyrics like “Stand beside her and guide her” to lyrics like “We’ll stick a boot in your ass.  It’s the American way.”  And we wonder why we have enemies? 

              Many a middle-aged adult will realize that they have strayed from who they were, their ideals and beliefs, their living out of who God created them to be.  And they will search for those parts of themselves that were pure and inborn.  Any therapist will tell you that you must start at your childhood in order to arrive at a healthy adulthood.  And, hopefully before we finish this thing called life, each of us will find our way back to the peace of being an integrated person, connected to our beginning, middle, and present – aware of our successes and failures and resolute to move forward in a healthy manner.  In the same way, I dream that this great and beautiful nation will find herself in her roots.  I pray that as the debates get louder and the guns shoot longer, and the tempest-tossed weep at our shores begging for the oxygen of freedom - that we will look deep within ourselves.  I hope our “childhood” as a nation will remind us of who we were and what we stood for before we shifted our focus to all the things we stand against.  I pray that our citizens, who came themselves from immigrants long passed, will remember what life could be like for them today had not their ancestors entered this land.  I pray that our love of country will never outweigh our love of humanity.  May we find ourselves again in the far-off echo of a hand reaching out to the hurting and pulling them into community.  And may we hear that same echo in the voices of our youth who are actively seeking justice for humanity.  America is most beautiful when she wears a robe of diversity.  America is most safe when she seeks the welfare of humanity.  God bless America, land that I love.  Stand beside her and guide her through the night with the light from above.