“It may well be that the Negro is God’s instrument to save the soul of America.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The Soul of America is battered, tossed and toiling in a sea of racial hate and injustice so cruel and so cold. I’ve felt sin’s breakers dashing, trying to conquer her soul.
I’ve seen the lightning of a most miserable and yet, still alterable fate, flashing. I’ve heard the thunder of truth from the distance roll:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” These words echo that great dream that tugs at America’s soul, pulling her toward Democracy. America. Home of the brave, land of the free.
America. That great city set on a hill… In “the dream.”
But in reality, now rejecter of “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
Little Brown babies severed from the arms of parents, made orphans for all the world to see. So dim now burns the light of Lady Liberty.
The Soul of America … It now lies frailly somewhere between death and life, on a ventilator. Amid bitter-cold winter winds of animus that blow from sea to barely shining sea.
O Say can you see? America stands at a glaring crossroads of her sins — past and present — and the hopes and the dream of what America might someday be.
America. She stands with bloodstained hands for her sins of lynching, Mississippi burnings and Jim Crow cruelty. Stands in her nearly unforgivable original sin of American slavery.
Stands stiff-necked, on the one hand, as one nation now divided. And on the other, as a nation of dreamers now collided with the once quieted embers of hate that once seemed to have subsided. Infectious embers reignited, in full, inglorious and raging flame, by a Bellower-in-Chief who sold America thousands of lies, under the guise to, “Make America Great Again.”
MAGA? This is the Soul of America’s saga: To dream — and to hate. To lift — and to oppress. To stand on the principles of truth, freedom and democracy — and to lie, enslave and wear the cloak of American hypocrisy. The Trail of Tears. The internment camp years. New hope, old fears. COVID tears.
MAGA? When was America ever great, beyond those brief but memorable glimpses of her brave humanity and her shimmering potentiality? Beyond her historic strides toward freedom, justice and equality?
Beyond those ideals forever etched upon her founding documents and carved deep within the hearts, minds and souls of every American who, even when America was at her very worst, still believed in the hope of what America might be at her very best? “One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” That’s still the test.
MAGA? Make America Great at Last. Repentant of her past.
Free at last! For she is “sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore, very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more.” Protecting the rich and status quo. Abandoning the sick, the widow and the poor.
The Soul of America … It has always been embroiled in a battle of good versus evil, often teetering on the verge of social upheaval. In a tug of war — not just between Black and white — but darkness and light. And yet, the true keepers of the American dream have always had one goal: To keep the dream alive and save America’s soul.
Among those brave keepers are American souls — from the American Revolution, to the Civil War and world wars — who fought and died for the American dream. There are the souls of the slave who closed their mortal eyes, believing that someday America would be free. And the souls of Americans who voted this presidential election to uphold the dream of Democracy ...
The Soul of America is battered. But I still see hope to make her free.
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
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