Every time I see fireworks, I am reminded of episodes from my childhood of July 4th celebrations. One time we all sat on a car at an outdoor movie theater and watched with our then little brothers. One time we went to Soldier's Field, a large sports stadium and waded through the crowds to see them. |
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These forays into the crowd to watch the bright explosions were always preceded by some serious barbecue, some fierce badminton, and some dancing in the backyard.
As an adult, I have watched fireworks outdoors at a concert with the Boston Pops playing ”Stars and Stripes Forever,” with the Rochester Symphony playing the “1812 Overture,” and more recently with friends on my rooftop.
Recently, I sat outside with my siblings and my husband John and watched as all over the city of Chicago and from as far away as Indiana, the sky lit up with white, purple, green, and red dancing lights. It was brilliant! The day before, my mom and dad joined us at the lake in a crazed multiracial, multicultural crowd all wanting to see the dancing lights. Why were we all out there? What drew us together? The family next to us spoke Spanish. I imagined them as immigrants and wondered how they felt about Independence Day. As it is when you are in a crowd, we pretended that we had walls around us and that we had privacy. But I watched intently as their little boy clapped in delight; I was clapping in delight, too.
What is that all about? Why as children and as adults do these lights draw us in? I asked my siblings yesterday about it. As people of African descent, we acknowledge Juneteenth as the day we were free. My brothers said that for them it is a summer celebration—family, fun, day off . . . just a time to "kick-it." I hear that. But for me, there is something more. Some yearning I have that is both exciting and sad. Something locked up in my childhood that lingers into the present. Some kind of hope or promise of real freedom.
I hear in my head the lyrics to Francis Scott Key's song. "O say, can you see by the dawn's early light . . . and the rocket’s red glare, the bomb bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there." I am a pacifist, and I would not call myself patriotic either. But, that song moves me. At the Liberty Science Center one July 4th, some friends and I sang it in four-part harmony. In the presence of loved ones, standing at the base of that Lady, I thought about all the people coming to this place for freedom. I of course thought about my people coming in chains and surviving, thriving, building a nation, healing, teaching, growing, raising children. I thought about all those who want to come now to this ". . . land of the free and the home of the brave." We don't want, some of us, to have those people here, now, who are coming with a foreign tongue, so called "taking our jobs."
Perhaps because of many factors, Independence Day makes me yearn for freedom, long for freedom, for all of the people in this country. Freedom from the tyranny of injustice. Freedom from want and need for the basics of life. Freedom from the fear of the other. Freedom to discover the joy of difference. Freedom to live and love people without judgment. Freedom from the slavery of sin or addiction or self-hatred or ungrieved loss or unforgiven slights. Freedom to earn a living wage and to share in the Dream.
There are yet many unfulfilled promises in this republic. There are divisions that cut deeply among us. There is the growing weight of an economic divide that imposes an almost unbearable injustice on too many of the people.
We are the bearers of a legacy of an ideal called freedom, not only to govern ourselves, but to also hold certain truths to be unalienable. All people, everywhere, have certain spiritual guarantees, just because they are human. We as a people in this country have a prophetic responsibility to bear the hope, the vision, the insistence of freedom, liberty and justice—for all.
Love, Jacqui
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