One of the first things I came across the morning of July 4th was this post on my Instagram feed from @themelanatedbirth:

While you’re out popping fireworks, lighting sparklers, and barbecuing with your friends today, I ask that you pause and reflect on the fact that the over 300,000 slaves that were brought to this country did NOT gain freedom on this day in 1776.
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Think of the natives who were killed and displaced to colonize this country, so you can tell folks to “go back to where they came from”.
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Likewise, consider all of the men, women, and children who are spending today in the horrible conditions that are the “detention” 🙄 camps….those people who have come to this country, not to steal, kill, and rape, but to provide better lives for their families.
Consider them as you scarf down those hot dogs and drink your beers because ‘Merica.

I was already having some real mixed feelings about this holiday.

I had celebrated Juneteenth with my family this year and really enjoyed it. It’s the holiday for people who were left behind, but still got their freedom, even though it was late, and even though, due to discrimination, it ended up being incomplete. It was a celebration of culture and joy.

July Fourth didn’t have the same thrill. I knew that the “freedom” we were celebrating came at the expense of a whole lot of brown-skinned folks. Design Mom sent me to a map that showed the names and territories of the Native Peoples on whose land I now live.  The recent debates between the Democratic Presidential Candidates had already reminded me that the camps where children were separated from their parents at the border are still open.I’ve been on a news blackout on and off since President Trump came into office. Invariably, when I let myself back into the news, even just to dip my toe in, it’s so horrifying that I immediately pull back to a full blackout again with minutes, hours, or days. There is nothing edifying out there. I feel helpless to fix what is wrong.

I was reminded after a week with my family in Pennsylvania how different the culture is in rural PA from where we live in the capitol of New York. Most people here would consider my family hopelessly conservative, but in PA, we would be considered liberal. I often found myself guarding my tongue or leaving the room when political discussion began because I quickly grew upset and didn’t feel like I could engage.I used to be annoyed that so many people in my city celebrated for the entire month of July by blowing off fireworks at all hours after dark. A week and a half ago, our neighbor blew off a firecracker so close by that the whole house shook. I didn’t say anything. Because now I kind of feel like, he is Black, and his people continue to be oppressed, and my people aren’t really doing anything about it, so if he wants to blow my house up, maybe he has earned that right.

I know that is irrational, but I don’t think I’ll ever call the police on my Black neighbors again. This summer marked the second time someone called the cops on my son. (He and his friends were making a fair amount of noise pollution both times, but no one came out to ask them to stop before calling the police).

What is the point of the Fourth of July anymore, in a country that is as divided as ours? Unless we change the rhetoric around this holiday, strip it down and completely build it again, it doesn’t work for a huge chunk of Americans. Immigrants don’t feel welcome here and some literally aren’t free. Blacks often don’t feel welcome here and the systems that were built to serve our citizens have almost invariably been created with racism built right into the framework. Native peoples have paid a steep price for the freedom that U.S. citizens claim.

The Lord proclaims: Do what is just and right; rescue the oppressed from the power of the oppressor. Don’t exploit or mistreat the refugee, the orphan, and the widow. Don’t spill the blood of the innocent in this place. Jeremiah 22:3

How can any of us celebrate Independence Day anymore? Our country, and the holiday itself, feel too broken.

Yet we DID celebrate. We barbeque’d, and had watermelon, and shot off fireworks (from my Grandma’s property across the street to my brother-in-law’s aunt’s house – if you squint your eyes, then cross them, then picture the rolling hills of rural Pennsylvania – this coincidence still may not make sense to you). As the fireworks sailed through the air, a pickup truck full of guys with baseball caps flew past us, shouting jubilant words of encouragement and camaraderie through their open windows.

We did more fireworks, down in the grassy fields of the farm where my Grandpa was born. It  felt appropriate – we were all together, celebrating with our family – but when talk around the table turned again to politics, I had to take a break outside for some deep breaths.

When immigrants live in your land with you, you must not cheat them. Any immigrant who lives with you must be treated as if they were one of your citizens. You must love them as yourself, because you were immigrants in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.       Leviticus 19:33-34

I suppose Rohr would say this is nondual thought working itself out again – how we can have people we love who hold unpalatable views. How we can celebrate a holiday that doesn’t work for everyone, but does work for us.

A lot of holidays I used to enjoy without a care now feel gross. I was already a little spiny about Independence Day last year. Mother’s Day, too, is on the chopping block – although don’t be confused – I never really enjoyed Mother’s Day. Columbus Day shouldn’t even be a thing anymore. And don’t get me started with Thanksgiving. Part of it’s the cultural and political climate. Part of it’s the commercialism that has gotten so smarmy that many a holiday overtaken by it (Valentine’s Day, Mother’s and Father’s Day, Thanksgiving/Black Friday) can leave a bad taste.

Independence Day and Thanksgiving, though, especially, seem like they won’t feel right until we are somehow able to MAKE them right. I’m not sure what that would look like – probably more than a public statement by our government, and probably not less than a cultural shift in the stories we tell ourselves about why we celebrate those days.

Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it!  Hebrews 13:2

Freedom is pure ideal to celebrate – but not everyone gained their freedom on July Fourth. Gratitude can be a pure thing – but when the day we celebrate it was built on mythology, on the backs of the Native Peoples who were cheated and pushed around and sickened by our pioneering brethren, and we celebrate it followed directly by a day full of excess and exuberant spending, it looses all that purity and instead feels simultaneously greedy and cheap.

Meanwhile, we live in a free country. Despite its shortcomings, as long as we have the financial means, many of us can makes lots of noise and eat good food on Independence Day in honor of the things that are right with the U.S.A.

We can also pray for a way forward as a nation that has been unable to make some of its historical wrongs right, and in many ways, is still doing things wrong.