We Will Be Free: Documents of the American Sacred Journey

The day I write this is Juneteenth, a celebration of the liberation of the last humans held as slaves in the United States. June 19, 1865 was also the end of the Civil War, which was a conflict so bloody and intimate that it is claimed by many that its battle grounds are still haunted by the souls of fallen soldiers. I take a moment to reflect on the words of Pres. Abraham Lincoln in the Emancipation Proclamation, “And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free.”

America was not the first Western nation to abolish slavery however it was a nation that went into a civil war to establish the dignity and liberty of each person. It was a costly conflict that brought this country to its knees. It was a battle for our nation’s soul.

Juneteenth was not the end of the struggle for equality, as it turns out. The page of history turned and new struggles emerged. America still struggles with fairness, justice, and accountability for the powerful. Each new generation must face the work of unification in a new way. Our founding documents remind us how to persist.

In the Declaration of Independence, our forefathers wrote that all souls are created equally, and this equality guarantees certain rights- to live, to be free, and to seek joy:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed…

Anyone who attempts to stamp out the rights of another must be held accountable, regardless of who they are, because we are all created by the Divine. These words were radical two and a half centuries ago, and they are radical now. All the oppression, bullying, scapegoating, and abuse we see in our America is antithetical to the vision of who we aspire to be.

The Constitution, with its 7 Articles and 27 Amendments, explains in very certain terms how the governed will be represented, in light of human rights which are critical to the dignity of the person. To achieve this, the Constitution includes the separation of power between Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches. Each arm of governance has important work to do, and this balance of power is likely the one thing that keeps the system alive- crisis after crisis, generation after generation. Our balance of power is the super-glue holding our democracy together.

All this said, I look at the foundational documents of America as paradoxically secular and deeply spiritual. The ascent of the human spirit is nothing less than sacred, and the mechanisms of government that support and protect that ascent are pragmatic and logical. In America, the finite meets the infinite in each of us.

To be patriotic, one must lean in to the sacred/secular documents that are foundational to our nation and aspirational to our experience as human beings. There’s hope and possibility in these lines.