(archived here from my personal Facebook)
Today is the 4th of July around the world. Just a date. But in the USA it is Independence Day. As I just wrote on another friend’s post: this is not the anniversary of achieving perfection, but the anniversary of the START of the greatest attempt at self-governance since the ancient Romans.
We began with a break from the mother stem of Britain, and grafted together many different ideas, traditions, cultures, and expectations to create something completely unseen at the time
Our national symbol might be the bald eagle, but in reality it might be better to see ourselves as a grafted and flowering tree: with a little bit of everything growing together in one garden, this “sea to shining sea” continent.
We are not perfect at self-governance, or even representative governance, but I think because of human nature, we can and must strive to continue, to graft new ideas onto the rest, to bring in new fruit-bearing cultures, and draw nourishment from all who have given and continue to give us root, from the native and the immigrant alike.
We should remain ever vigilant and prudently prune cancers from this, our Tree of Life, so that the whole might live happy and healthy, bearing fruit far into the future.
Lara Zielinsky 