It says in Ecclesiastes that there’s a time for everything.  A Priest, a Minister and a Rabbi were asked the question, “When is the most important day for a man’s children?”  The Minister spoke up first saying, “The day they are Born Again,” The Priest quickly followed, “ It is the day they are Baptized.”  The Rabbi thought about the two answers already given and then replied, “It is the day they are able to move out of the house and pay their own rent!”

Personally, I believe it’s the day, they say, “Dad, I’m hungry?  And you can answer, Well, go fix yourself something to eat!”  The highlights of raising children can seem to last forever, they just change with the seasons of life.  Like the song says: “Don’t blink,”

There’s a lot of fear right now in our country, a lot of political rhetoric driven by hate and a lot of voices who want to change America into something unlike what our founding fathers established.  Maybe this is just a “season of life” in our Democracy. I hope it’s not a time that begets more violence.  We tried that in the 1860’s and we’re still trying to straighten that out.  When societies need significant change there is always a degree of violence that in the moment seems “over the top.”  I believe the majority of people counting both sides in the argument, would desire the “better angels of our nature” find a way to forgive and change before history repeats itself.

When Benjamin Franklin emerged on the street,  the day he participated in drafting  our constitution, a woman asked him: “Did you give us a Monarchy or a Republic?’ He answered,  “A Republic, if you can keep it.” The most important day in our life right now might be the day we are asked by someone or something to act with racism; and, we tell them, “Well,  go and  look back into the year 2020.” Because that’s when it ended.  You might say we were baptized or born to a new way of looking at each other.  All people could move about freely, find a job, enjoy the fruits of liberty and pay their own rent.

This is the day that no one clamored to be black, brown, yellow, white, gay, Islamic Americans, we just all considered ourselves to be simply, Americans.  Citizens in the greatest country the world has ever seen; because, we are capable of change that begets “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Because, “All men are created equal” in our “One nation under God, Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I hope we can keep it!  Ain’t it so!