Light slides shimmering
across the water.

A boat’s wake
slices its surface,
weaving its warp
against the woof
of the rippling wind.

in this quintessent moment,
perfection’s dance
overwhelms my senses,
skewering my thoughts,
bursting the bubble
of my restless mind.

I am a wave
in the sea of Spirit,
and I stand
with a foot in each.

With one eye,
I see the little world
I call “my life”.

With the other,
I see everything
that is “not me”,
flowing around me
and through me.

When I close my eyes,
relax my stance,
I float away
from my little world,
awash in the flow
that gives me life.

Someone wants you to be angry;
someone wants you to be afraid.

Are you what they want you to be,
or are you something else?

Find out!

I am white and male
through an accident of birth,
and an American
through another accident of birth.

And I belong to this human family,
on this planet full of other sentient beings,
by yet another accident of birth.

And what we all have in common
is that every being on this planet
has a right to be here,
that we are equal in God’s eyes.

And our sacred duty
is to learn how to get along.

I am grateful
to be an American.

I am grateful
for the diverse beauty of this land,
and for the richness
of its diverse people and cultures.

And I regret the wrongs
that those who govern us
have sometimes committed,
but I am grateful for our freedom
to right those wrongs,
when we have the will to do so,
and to speak out
whenever we see them.

I am grateful
for what we are,
but I am more grateful
for what we can become.

On this day, so many years ago,
our forefathers declared our independence,
so we would be free from foreign rule,
free to pursue our own destiny
as a nation, as a people.

And yet, too many of us were NOT free,
shackled to the land by land owners
to whom they were mere property,
stripped of their own inalienable rights
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

And to this day, those rights are only distant dreams
to all too many of us, as we struggle under the yoke
of a myriad of inequalities.

So I ask myself, on this day, if each of us are truly free,
to enjoy our independence on equal ground
with ALL of our brothers and sisters,
or if our independence is just a happy myth,
that does not describe the world we actually live in.

Freedom is a beautiful dream, one still worth striving for,
despite a million harsh realities that seem to stand in our way.

So perhaps each one of us must first embrace the truth
that we are NOT independent,
that we are bound by a million forces
that limit us as individuals,
but also connect us as a human family.

And there is a deeper truth, that we are INTERDEPENDENT,
that we must achieve freedom for ALL of us,
before any of us are truly free.