My birthday card to America

Dear America,

Happy 242^nd Birthday! I am praying that you have a beautiful day of celebrating and smiles, counting our blessings and hugging our neighbors and friends, hot dogs and fireworks.  I know things are difficult for you right now, your people are not in a good place, but take heart.  Things have been difficult before, and you’ve always eventually triumphed. Lots of people are praying and hoping and working for that to happen again.

I know you remember the hard times.  I know you cringe to recall the day that Senator Preston Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner with a cane on the floor of the US Senate because Sumner made an abolitionist speech.  Some people called that event “the breakdown of reasonable discourse” and consider it one of the stepping stones to our Civil War.

I know, America, that once again reasonable discourse is in peril.  Instead of respecting another’s choices, beliefs and dignity, we go out of our way to sue and protest and work to close down businesses of people who want to live according to their own moral compasses, instead of just finding a different business to employ. Instead of debating like adults, we call names, we say, “well what I do is okay because HE started it”, we think that political problems are going to be solved by embarrassing individuals outside of work hours and hounding them out of restaurants and theaters instead of showing human respect then listening and speaking with civility and being willing to compromise and work together.  We listen to biased reports and sanctify comedians who threaten public figures and their children and call it a joke or hold up replicas of severed heads and then claim to be victims when they aren’t appreciated. Somehow, we’ve evolved into a society that thinks everyone deserves a trophy and vilifies anyone who actually works for the prize. We’ve divided our society with marches and hateful aggression by claiming that some lives matter more than others or that people who break the law are somehow more important and deserve more consideration than those that abide by the rules.

It’s enough to make you cry, isn’t it, America?    On this, your birthday and any other recent days, it is easy to feel discouraged and bleak, but just for today, I hope you can block out the noise of unreasonable and uncivil discourse and recall the good. Just for today, remind me, America, to concentrate on the way that the strangers at a little church in my new town became friends with willing hugs that didn’t care about the color of my skin. Don’t let me forget that so many people willingly put themselves in harm’s way on our city streets and in foreign places every day to fight for the safety and rights of people they don’t know. Instead of the trendy and popular hate I see on TV and social media, help me to see the kindness of people who stop to help change a tire or support a friend even though that person voted differently in the last election.  Clear a path for me, America, so that I can remember how beautiful you are and how blessed and lucky we are to be here.  And then, tomorrow, the day after your birthday, help me to do my part to restore reasonable and productive discourse in my country.