Independence Day. Let me start by wishing everyone independence. While I celebrate our independence from England long ago I realize it came at the cost of wrongly displacing the true Native Americans. I therefore am cautious of shouting too loud on the 4th of July. Today I include some thoughts, some quite serious, though I begin on a light note.
“You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.”
–Erma Bombeck
“And I say the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father.”
–Black Elk
“America is much more than a geographical fact. It is a political and moral fact — the first community in which men set out in principle to institutionalize freedom, responsible government, and human equality.”
–Adlai Stevenson
“We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.”
–Robert J. McCracken
“If you want to know what happens when you don’t secure your borders ask a Native American.”
–UNKNOWN
I don’t really know how to close this post. I have had the honor of spending a great deal of time on Native American land. There is a much greater spiritual power and integrity there than I’ve ever felt in the US state capitals or God forbid Washington DC. I believe I’ll close as I often do–Peace.
