THE GLORY OF THE U. S. A.

July 4 is a National Celebration and for my wife and me it is also now a Family Celebration after so many, many years away from family. We moved again for the last time, we trust and hope and pray, to be near our youngest and her family. We are looking forward to hot dogs and potato salad and all the rest; sparklers and cherry bombs and neighborhood celebration.

And what a neighborhood!: all sorts and conditions of people: young and old, working and retired; all kinds of nationalities and skin color; dozens of stories of successes and failures, ups and downs. This neighborhood is a microcosm of this great country in which we all live and move and have our being.

Of course, every neighborhood Arlena and I have lived in over the years has been much the same whether in mill towns in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, booming communities in the Northwest and Middle America: everywhere one and the same, but each different in their own way. We have been blessed by all those we have met over the years and hope we have in some way blessed them as well.

I thought about all this as we are settling into our new home in our new community as I thought about the Fourth of July. It brought to mind an episode of the old Night Court we saw a while back while binging on the series. It was about a large group of people, all immigrants from all over the world who were in court to be sworn in a US citizens. Judge Harry walked into his courtroom, looked around and shout “We are the world!”

And that we are. And that is what is the true glory of the United States of America. We are who we are, the greatest nation in the world, because each one of us, some how in some way, is an immigrant. Each of us, personally or through our immigrant descendants, has brought something to this country to make it better, to make it what it is. We don’t have to make American great again, it already is. We just have to keep making it better and better for everyone.

Sadly, I believe, so many have forgotten how blessed we are to live in this country. Why do so many want to come here? Why did my grandparents want to migrate from Italy to come here and raise a family? Why did the descendants of all our neighbors wherever we have lived, and some of them themselves, come here to live and work and find a new and better life?

Why? Because they somehow knew they would be accepted and believed in their hearts that they could add even a tiny bit to the greatness of this country. The glory of the United States is that we truly are the world in microcosm. Yes, we will disagree on many issues, but one truth we cannot disagree about and for which we should be proud and for which we should celebrate each day is that We Are the World. Let the fireworks begin!