Mass and Independence Day

Today was the Mass. I love the Mass, even if on Sunday mornings my body wants to poop for some reason. We had the readings by Sister Berita, and I found out by listening to the gossip behind me that I will not see Sister Maria again before leaving for Pennsylvania. Sister Maria went home to Zimbabwe for what she hopes is only a six week visit instead of being made to stay; can't say as I can blame her. No one really wants to stay in Zimbabwe with the hyper inflation and the widespread thuggery and starvation, especially once they have tasted the sweet nectar that is the United States of America!

Wow that sounded entirely jingoistic and nationalistic, but it is the truth. I would rather be here, than there. And there will be more on this special day later, but first I want to keep talking about the Mass. Today's Gospel reading was about how Jesus sent forward seventy two men ahead of Him to pave the way as it were for His ministry. He told them to travel lightly, giving very specific instructions on what to do; even the self mortification of wearing no sandals. They had to leave a lot behind to move in to the future, a whole lot. Last week He told the man to give up his plow and follow Him, that there was no looking back if he was to move forward and into the Kingdom of God. This week, those who were sent out ahead of Him were told much the same; not to be encumbered by burdens and such. Travel light, rely on others to help you. Give up that which ties you down unnecessarily.

Fear. Fear is my largest burden, and the root of almost all my sins. It took the worst mistake I've ever made probably, to make me realize that. Fear of hurting other people. Fear of being alone for the rest of my life. Fear of not being fully recovered, and therefore fear leading to an elaborate lie to make others believe that I had. Fear of the future, fear of the past coming up once more. Fear of meeting new people and fear of losing my friends.

Fear is what I need, with the help of God, to give up. If I could just stop being afraid and tear down these mammoth walls of fear that have been built up around me, then I could travel light as it were. Fear. Perhaps President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said it best in his inaugural address, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

I want to advance. I want to travel on. I want to be able to call myself a Christian, and not have some of my dearest friends sneer at it, and tell me I am a horrible Christian because I do not act like one. I want to be free of my chains.

Now, as to the nationalism of earlier in the post, I feel that I might need to express it a bit more. Today is the day that we celebrate as Independence Day. It is often argued if today is the day that the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the actual motion to declare independence was voted on and ratified on July 2nd. None the less, sometimes in the course of human events, separation becomes necessary, as it did between the American colonies and Great Britain.

It was not an easy struggle. Going against the redcoats in an open field was suicidal at worst, and hopelessly optimistic at best. Rarely could the colonial troops fight their motherland's feared corps in the field and carry the day. Our military record was abysmal, the Continental Army on the verge of mass desertion at almost every turn, as patriots such as Thomas Paine released works extolling them to continue, and George Washington was forced to make bloody examples of how he dealt with desertion, including the practice of decimation of deserting units; having one in ten killed by their own comrades. Washington's own record was marred with defeat after defeat.

Quite frankly, we would not have won our independence without the aid of others. It is the great historical irony then, that the now infamous traitor Benedict Arnold, whose very name is synonymous with betraying one's nation, would carry a victory that would be used to bring the French into the war. Without the French, we would have failed. They had an actual army, an actual navy, and were able to make a colonial war into one that spanned the world, with intricate alliances brought into play.

And so today, we remember how the chain of events that led to the birth pains of a nation began. We wouldn't get it right at first. We'd set up another government before, that failed miserably. Eventually however, we got it right. Towards the end of the founding of the United States of America, governed by federal and state governments and in the dying days of the Articles of Confederation, Benjamin Franklin addressed his fellow delegates to what had become a Constitutional Convention. As he stood, his eyes fell upon a carving on the back of George Washington's chair, a carving of half a sun. He stared thoughtfully at it for a minute, then proclaimed words that would be remembered forever, "I have often looked at that picture behind the president without being able to tell whether it was a rising or setting sun. Now at length I have the happiness to know that it is indeed a rising, not a setting sun."

Fifty years to the day later, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the only two signers of the Declaration of Indpendence to serve as President of the United States would die, each declaring in the end that the other still lived. The road has not been easy. The grandson of the man who put forward the idea to secede from Great Britain would one day lead the Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War. We have faced a civil war, the near collapse of the nation during the Great Depression, domestic terrorism from the Ku Klux Klan and others, the struggle for equal civil rights, mass assassinations, unpopular wars abroad, and two world wars. We have shamefully displaced the native population under force of arms, including some of my distant ancestors. We have faced terrorism abroad against our embassies and barracks, and in 2001 we finally lost our innocence on it at home. We have stared down the face of mutually assured destruction in the Cold War without blinking.

We, as a nation have endured. We as a nation will continue to endure. I do not believe I will live to see America turn three hundred years old. If nothing else, because I'd be ninety, and not a lot of men live that long. That said...I do believe that this nation will live to see itself turn three hundred. Because freedom endures. Love endures.