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.