Patriot’s Day

“Patriotism;” Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines it simply as “love for or devotion to one's country.” Oddly enough, they date it’s creation as 1726, just fifty years before our country came into being. “Patriot is an older word, 1605. It’s taken from the Greek roots for Patriarch, as in your fathers. Webster’s defines a patriot as “one who loves his or her country and supports its authority and interests”

The question is, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

The Boys Scouts of America taught me to love you less than God and almost as much as my immediate family.

What are you? Who are you?

Is a country a place? I love your terrain. I love your panoramic views, your horizons and highways. I love the searing heat of my native Arizona and the cool, damp, subtropical sea breezes of the California coast. I love the aroma of pine trees in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I love the dramatic landscapes of Colorado, the serenity of Wyoming and New Mexico. I love the chilly waters and pebbly shores of the great lakes in Michigan. And I’ve sure come to love the rolling hills of Iowa that seem to embrace you and the aromas that come from the fields when the corn and soybeans are ready to be harvested.

Is a country a political entity? I’d have to admit to having a love-hate relationship with you then. Sometimes I feel like I’m the rebellious teenager, other times I feel like you’re the impetuous, sometimes annoying child and I’m the exhausted parent. Why can’t we always see eye to eye?

As much as I HATE to admit it, there have been times that I’ve been embarrassed to claim you. Like when your own people were enslaved or hanging from your trees, or when thousands of them were cut down in one day in Oklahoma City, not by outsiders, but by one of your own. Or when we are millions are never born because others think of them as decisions, rather than as people. Or when I reflect upon how much how few of us horde and consume while so many others starve and suffer. There have been so many times when your way was not the right way.

But, there are other times when I couldn’t be more proud of you. Like how much how many suffered and sacrificed for others on this awful day two years ago. When I think of how much how many suffered and sacrificed to literally save the world sixty years ago when evil incarnate walked the earth. There have been so many times, so many times when your way has been the most right way, when you led the way, even when others refused to follow.

Is a country songs and colors? Pomp and ceremony? Is a country the sum of it’s symbols? I love red, white and blue. Your anthems bring a lump to my throat, even more since this awful day two years ago. But while I venerate your flag, I will not bring my self to worship it. In the end it is only cloth and ink. Rather, we should “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

It is not the red of thirteen stripes of a banner, it is the red of the life blood of your patriots that matters. Deep in the ground of Lexington and Anteitem, of Normandy and Sicily and Glaudal Cannal, and yes, of Manhattan.

What is a country? Is a country a system? Laws and processes and precedents? Is it a shared ethos? A morality, founded on God’s eternal laws?

I love that you still work. Through abuse and corruption, investigations and scandals, swings of the pendulum, the system that is America still works.

I love that you promise me that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

So that no denomination is corrupted by the power of being your “official” religion. So that I can seek God as I understand Him and as He reveals Himself to me in His Word. Even if that means that false religions are free to flourish here too.

So that I can speak my mind without being jailed or fined or murdered or persecuted.

So that people can read this.

So that we can gather peaceably for social, political, or religious reasons. So that thousands could gather in 1963 to hear a black preacher with a dream.

So that we can complain about you, complain to you, and “throw the bums out.”

Is a country a people? We are so many. So different. So imperfect. So angry with each other, so disrespectful of each other, so selfish. So human.

So warm, so giving, so caring, so committed, so daring, so intelligent, so powerful, so patient, so helpful, so important, so united. So sewn together not by race, not by creed or color, not by language, not by song or culture, but by choice, by commitment, by conviction, by country.

I love you to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach. I promise to do my best to do my duty to God and my country. I’ll help, I’ll give, I’ll vote, I’ll volunteer, I’ll hope, I’ll continue to believe in you.

I’ll pray for you.

I’ll remember.

I’ll remember all my fellow patriots who were lost this awful day two years ago.

I’ll remember, will you?