LET FREEDOM RING

I don’t know exactly when I began flinching at the sight of an American flag. I know it’s been since last November’s election, as I’ve watched civil rights crushed and truth trampled and our beloved national landmarks turned into private assets. I know these wrongs have dealt me an internal seismic shift, leaving me off balance, angsty, scared. And I know that for some time now, when I glimpse a flag, I automatically assume it belongs to a family or business group of Trump supporters, and I check to see if there’s a billboard close by, blaring “Lock Her Up!”. I know I’m painting a complex landscape with a ridiculously broad brush, but that doesn’t stop me from flinching and then feeling bad about it.

Not that the flag has ever particularly moved me. I saluted it at school, by holding my hand over my heart as I sang, “From every mountainside, let freedom ring!” But the words were mostly words, the song a rote recitation. As an able bodied person with white skin and an advanced education, I’ve grown up with so much freedom I’ve seldom questioned it.

So, when the Fourth of July happens, rather than celebrate my country’s freedom, I usually overeat at a barbecue and complain about the ear-splitting fireworks that boom three days early here in the Valley, and the flag is just a piece of the holiday scenery.

Last January, sick of being alternately depressed or enraged at the latest political blow, I helped organize a celebration for Martin Luther King’s birthday at our local Methodist Church. After I’d recruited Washington’s poet laureate and two fine activists for Seattle’s homeless population as speakers, I got anxious that too few people would come, and I went into high gear, spreading the word.

I needn’t have worried. Folks told me they were no longer shell-shocked and were hungry to be with like minded people, to find comfort and direction. The day of the event, I watched those people throng into that church till they filled it to overflowing. I watched them as they listened to the speakers, their faces hopeful, yearning. And, after the choir sang “Precious Lord, Take my Hand,” Dr. King’s requested song at his funeral, I stood with the people as we closed with “My country, ’tis of thee. Sweet land of liberty. Of thee I sing.”

I saw the American flag standing in the sanctuary, bold with red and white stripes, stars spangling the dark blue square. I saw the people, singing from their hearts. And though I don’t think a national flag belongs in any church, I felt the magnitude of what that flag symbolizes, and I shifted again, to fierce pride for the rights our people have fought for, and to the preciousness of those rights as we ended with a rousing “From every mountainside, Let freedom ring!” Yes, I thought. Please.

So, this year on Fourth of July, I whined about the stunningly loud fireworks, and I ate too much at a barbecue. But I also made a sizeable donation to the civil rights warriors at the ACLU. And I went outside and stuck an American flag, one Ed bought at Ace Hardware, in the ground right in front of our mailbox, bold as could be. I claimed it. Because it means let freedom ring. And because it’s mine now. Mine.

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