Saturday, July 4, 2020

Fourth of July Reflections

When Lennon's song "Imagine" came out in 1971 I was 13 years old. The poetic questions he asks -- What if there were no countries, no borders, no religion, no private property, no war? -- made an indelible mark on this little boy/man. It began right then and there. I starting falling out of love with the idea of countries and borders and organized religion. I still like private property, sort of.

I identify strongly as an immigrant even though I was born in this country, barely. My parents had just got here a few years earlier. My oldest brother was born in the Netherlands and mom was seven months pregnant with my middle brother on the boat.

I grew up in a bilingual home. Literally every single one of my relatives -- all of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins -- lived on the other side of the world oceans away.

I've always looked at the United States as somewhat of an outsider, an interested by-stander. I never got the flag-waving, chest-thumping thing. It all looked a little too uncomfortably like one of those vast Nazi rallies on the Zeppelinfeld in Nuremberg where Hitler screamed into a microphone and the crowd cried out for more. Rabid patriotism makes me nervous.

I'm suspicious of nations. (That is something I share with my libertarian friends.) Every worst impulse of humanity gets magnified when married with the power of the State. That said, I also believe that our solutions are social solutions. Individuals and individual choice alone cannot undo the spell that has been cast -- the spell of division, greed, and intentional cruelty.

So every Fourth of July I play along -- I certainly don't hate America, and in fact I dearly love her founding principles: equality, human rights, and e pluribus unum. But as we all know, those principles and ideals have never been real for everyone -- not yet.

But they can be. I really believe that. I believe that what lies ahead is so much greater than what lies behind us. I will never stop believing that, not because I live living in a fantasy, but because something deep, deep inside of me -- beneath ideology and identity -- moves me to believe that, in the same way that a mountain stream knows that it is returning to the sea, even though it has no memory of the ocean and does not know the way to go. The natural fall of the land will lead it home. So too, the natural line of our inner wisdom, and the sacrifices of too many to count, pave the way for our redemption. We will one day realize the dream of the Beloved Community, beyond border, beyond nation, beyond religion, beyond ideology. It is our fundamental nature to lean in toward each other, to be one. And we will.

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

I'm feeling contemplative and reflective on this strangely still 4th of July. There will be no fireworks over Lake Murray this year, where I live. Normally we sit in my backyard and watch that. But this year, it will just be the sounds of crickets, and the roosting of the birds in the trees as they settle in for the night. The stars will be our lights in the sky.

At dawn this morning a lone coyote trotted by in the open field behind my house, headed for home and a long day's sleep. He doesn't know he lives in the United States of America. He and his family have lived in these chaparral canyons for 400,000 years. In their family annals the United States came and went like a blip.

Once in a while, we should all take that long view.

4 comments:

Duncan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Duncan said...

Hey Professor, I'm in one of your classes and i thought i would checkout your blog... My parents share many of your traits demographically regarding being the children of folks who escaped euro extremism. It was helpful for me to read through your thoughts on this because it really is an under served theme in American discourse! I couldn't stop nodding my head when you mentioned your general skepticism of nation states. Like you, I try to take the long view. I'm learning that this is how the wise do it. I hope you don't mind, but i wanted to share my favorite poem with you! It's a little long... Cheers!


The wind-struck music, 1938 by Robinson Jeffers

"Ed Stiles and old Tom Birnam went up to their cattle on the bare hills
above Mai Paso;
They'd ridden under the stars' white death, When they reached the ridge
The huge tiger-lily of a certain cloud-lapped astonishing autumn sunrise opened all its petals.
Ed Stiles pulled in his horse,that flashy palamino he rode cream-color, heavy white mane, white tail, his pride and said
'Look, Tom. My God. Ain't that a beautiful sunrise?'
Birnam drew down his mouth, set the hard old chin, and whined:
'Now, Ed: listen here: I haven't an ounce of poetry in all my body.
It's cows we're after.'
Ed laughed and followed; they began to sort the heifers out of the herd.
One red little deer-legged creature rolled her wild eyes and ran away down the hill,
The old man hard after her. She ran through a deep-cut gully,
And Birnam's piebald would have made a clean jump but the clay lip crumbled under his take-off,
He slipped and spilled in the pit,Flailed with four hooves and came out scrambling.

Stiles saw them vanish, Then the pawing horse and the flapping stirrups.
He rode and looked down and saw the old man in the gulley-bottom flat on his back,
most grimly gazing up at the sky.
He saw the earth banks, the sparse white grass,
The strong dark sea a thousand feet down below, red with reflections of clouds.
He said 'My God, Tom, are you hurt?'
Who answered slowly, 'No, Ed. I'm only lying here thinking o' my four sons'
Biting the words carefully between his lips
'big handsome men, at present lolling in bed in their . . . silk . . . pyjamas . . .
And why the devil I keep on working?'
He stood up slowly and wiped the dirt from his cheek, groaned, spat, and climbed up the clay bank.
Stiles laughed: 'Tom, I can't tell you: I guess you like to.
By God I guess you like the sunrises.'
The old man growled in his throat and said
'Catch me my horse.'
This old man died last winter, having lived eighty-one years under open sky,
concerned with cattle, horses and hunting,
No thought nor emotion that all his ancestors since the ice-age could not have comprehended.
I call that a good life; narrow, but vastly better than most men's lives,
And beyond comparison more beautiful;
The wind-struck music man's bones were moulded to be the harp for. "

Duncan said...

Sadly the formatting of that poem is little chopped up thanks to my copypasta...

© Peter Bolland said...

Duncan, wow! I just found your wonderful comments on this blog post. Thanks so much for reading my stuff and for engaging with it. That means everything to me! I appreciate you. And this poem by Jeffers -- I will savor it.