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What I Celebrate Every Fourth of July
I turned 13 a couple of weeks before the Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989. My parents were teachers for the sons and daughters of U.S. military personnel and we had been living in what was then West Germany for several years by that point.
My family had visited East Germany just the previous spring. It was a surreal experience to cross the heavily guarded border and drive through East Berlin and still see bombed out buildings that had never been restored after the devastating raids in the final days of World War II.
We remarked on how strikingly drab and lifeless everything seemed. It was immediately clear to me that there was something fundamentally wrong with any system of government that kept its citizens locked up like prisoners and, at the same time, seemed to suck the beauty and joy out of everyday living.
I am so profoundly grateful to live in a country that consistently proclaims and defends the right of every individual to freely exercise their religious beliefs.
One of my favorite things about that period in history is that it wasn’t a military intervention or foreign power or the threat of armed conflict that caused the Wall to fall. It was the courage of everyday men and women—teachers and waiters and factory workers and farmers—all coming together and standing shoulder to shoulder, demanding their human rights. There are fundamental, universal truths as to how people should treat each other. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights does a good job articulating them. But the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights are the gold standard that every democracy in the world still aspires to more than 200 years later.
The First Amendment to the Constitution reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Leo Tolstoy is credited with saying that truth, like gold, is obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. A free and fair society, where each person can pursue what is true for themselves, washing away anything they feel is false without fear of oppression or recrimination, is the foundation for any spiritual advancement humanity can hope to make.
I am so profoundly grateful to live in a country that consistently proclaims and defends the right of every individual to freely exercise their religious beliefs. As a member of a minority religion that, in many respects, is unlike any other religion on Earth, the wisdom of my nation’s founders to protect my right to seek and speak my own truth, to gather with likeminded people and to hold my government accountable, is something I celebrate every Fourth of July.
