Love will set us free if we let it
And other musings on patriotism, freedom, and place for the 4th of July holiday.
Patriotism is said to be the feeling of love, devotion, and a sense of attachment to a country or state. This attachment can be a combination of different feelings for things such as the language of one's homeland, and its ethnic, cultural, political, or historical aspects. In this sense, I am an American patriot and I am proud to be.
I am a person who embraces the opportunities of our July 4th season to question my own political biases and beliefs that might be limiting my own capacity to love others and the country were I am a citizen. As a Southerner who has a wildly diverse family tapestry of political views, religions, and cultural identities, I have decades of training in how to love people I don’t agree with. I am deeply grateful for this instruction. Especially for the experiences I had when I was kid that imprinted on me how loving people who are different from us is a skill, a talent, and a gift.
I’ve not had the luxury, ever, of experiencing the kind of safety that I imagine comes with assuming that the people that you love agree with you about the shit that really matters to you. We loved each other anyways. We did not, do not agree, about some very big stuff in my family: abortion is def a third rail for my family. It’s ok. In fact, I have spent many a 4th of July with my step-brother’s mom (who I’ve known since I was 7 years old) eating BBQ and pie, sharing our love of our family knowing that each of us works tirelessly to, in the ways that matter to each of us, keep women safe. She runs the largest anti-abortion non-profit in Arkansas, and I, well, I am very active on the opposing side. We each welcome the opportunity to know the humanity that is the “other side” and I cherish the time I spend with her. Truly.
That said not only am I a proud American, I am a proud Southerner. I love being from the South. I especially love being from Arkansas, a place often associated with ignorance and intolerance. I love telling people who think they’ve figured me out as a middle aged, upper middle class, straight-passing, white, Jew that I come from rural Arkansas. They are suddenly, and often, very confused. I welcome the opportunity to open people’s hearts and minds to how “people like me” can come from “a place like Arkansas”. What does any of that actually mean?????
I love the places and people that I come from. I know that there has been (and continues to be) much harm done in my name as an American, in the name of the places and people who are mine. I have been an active part of that exporting of harm through my work in global health where I intended to do no harm but certainly did as I rolled up into places, spaces, people, with a too heightened sense of worth, ability, and value. The work of reckoning with that arrogance is what I am up to a lot of the time these days. It’s embarrassing, humbling, and my work to do. I am grateful for the opportunity to do better. Every day.
Over the last many decades of my lucky life, I’ve embraced this season of July 4th inspired liberation and patriotism in varying ways. When I was in my twenties I threw a 4th of July party, inviting guests to come dressed as their favorite revolutionary. When I can, I love to spend the 4th of July with my brother and his family in Arkansas on a lake during the day and setting off fireworks together at night. Wherever I am during this holiday, I love to listen to music that tugs at my heart in ways that make me feel the pride I often feel to be from the places + people that I am from.
I’ve lived outside of the US and it was during those episodes of my own ex-patriotism that I realized the depth and specificity of my own patriotism. I spent many a night during the “W” presidency when I was living in Asia and the Middle East, often the only American at a dinner party, explaining how it was that we’d gotten to a “W” in the first place. I did not relish that spokesperson role, I struggled with it. But I also found during those rounds of “Defend Yourself, American” a sense of pride, especially about being from the American South, about where and who I am from.
As a Jew, there continues to be harm done in my name in Palestine. I aim to do better. I aim to love more and to see where I can do repair, especially with the Palestinians in my life. As a Jew in the US South I do not have the luxury of visibility, cultural awareness of what I am up to by my neighbors, and/or an understanding of the ways in which I, too, am Othered. Being a Jew in the modern Confederacy is full of opportunity to teach, connect, and bring folks in as allies during these hard and scary times. So that is what I am leaning into.
This July 4th, 2024 has me driving across the southern US heading to DC with my youngest kid. I am eating local grits, greens, BBQ, and drinking loads of iced tea. I am going to small town museums about cotton and music and endangered species of plants and animals. While we drive, I am taking in the lushness of the rice fields or southern Arkansas, the piney trees of east Texas, the rolling hills and thickening forests of Tennessee, the HUGE trees in Western Virginia, and I can’t wait to take in the fireworks in DC at the Lincoln Memorial later this week.
I will absolutely cry on July 4th when taking in the fireworks with thousands of others in a place of such loaded significance. I will use those feelings to move me towards action, study, and care. I will look over at my teenage son, who will likely not be looking at me, and I will feel a sense of American legacy. We will go to the African American Museum the following day where we will feel our own white people legacy in all of its heaviness. I will not look away.
I will not look away. I will not look away. I will not look away. THIS is what it means to me to be a patriot right now. Each day we can choose to do better, to work harder, together, to mold this country into the possibility that it still holds. Let’s love more. Let’s love deeper. Let’s dare to love this country into it’s best, most full of care, liberty, and safety for all iteration of itself and then let’s love some more!
Happy 4th of July, y’all.
Thx for these words, Christyna. They are eloquent + insightful. As always. Thx for reading along.
Nothing has one wrestle with what it means to be an American like significant time spent abroad.
Patriotism is, or should be, complex and nuanced. I lean into the ideals of our founding, without skipping over the facts of slavery’s role in the founding and strength of our nation. Stolen labor is a shaky foundation, for certain, and it will haunt us until a critical mass of White Americans do the work to reckon with it’s impact.
We will not look away- standing for a more perfect union, with room, and liberty, for one and all.