YEARNING TO BREATH FREE

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Like the words in this poem written by Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”, millions heard this call long before the statue of Liberty raised her torch to guide them in New York harbor. I am among those millions of descendents of those who became a personal melting pot of those whose longing drove them to these shores. I hear their combined voices in my head with freedom’s genetic call implanted there. Their sacrifice is gain to them better to die free than to live in slavery. Which one of us has not heard it and been humbled by their devotion and courage to fight the big fights of those who are ever vigilant, whose names are written in stone throughout their beloved land.

From a distance of time I hear them call their voices dim quieted by the turmoil of the passing of the age. As I reflect upon the winds of change I fear for us that the longing to breathe free is no longer a fight to the death. What do we want in exchange for our lives? When did the voices in our blood go silent? When did we begin to want something less? Did we simply lose the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, to discern even a basic truth? When did we think we could trust our futures to anyone who promised us a rose garden? Was that with or without thorns?

The greatness of an ideal that we are the children of a higher power with a destiny to be great begins to fade . Are we always striving to be more than we are? We lose ourselves and our end will be to bow our knee to a lesser god who considers us to be the serfs in a second rate world.

I guarantee you that we shall suffer with a great sorrow of a great loss. Still, the voices of our heritage cannot be silenced but will continue to haunt us with that same longing that changed a world. Those who dared to cross the unknown oceans and fight the greatest powers in the earth armed only with a rag tag army live in us and cannot be excised from our remembrance. It was not only what they did but the spirit that drove them to do it. They trusted not in themselves but to eternal things like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in a land given to us by divine providence a haven from tyranny.

Again we have to choose. The forces that will to subvert justice our way of life continue their furtive efforts slip in morally, financially and religiously. Will we choose to be the children born of greatness? We are a people whose lineage spans the globe filled with the abundance of diversity or do we choose to be nameless illegitimate children wards of the state. Our adulterated inheritance derived from the poverty of our neglect? Like the Arpege perfume commercial from decades ago said, “Promise her anything but give her Arpege.” What is the substitute for our promise now?