Liberty

Because this year July 4 coincided with Shabbat, our service substituted two traditional patriotic hymns, My Country ‘Tis of Thee, by Samuel Francis Smith and America the Beautiful, by Katherine Lee Bates and a more contemporary musical vision of America, American Tune, by Paul Simon, for our usual songs.

In the context of Covid-19, Black Lives Matter, and a culture of divisiveness that seems to permeate every aspect of American life, the songs saddened me by starkly illustrating the distance between our ideals and the reality of 21st. century America.

My Country ‘Tis of Thee was performed for the first time on July 4, 1831. I was particularly moved by the second stanza:

Let music swell the breeze,

And ring from all the trees

   Sweet freedom’s song;

Let mortal tongues awake;

Let all that breathe partake;

Let rocks their silence break;

The sound prolong.

“Sweet freedom’s song” has never existed for all Americans, some of whom cannot even take breathing for granted. And what is Black Lives Matter and the protests across the country if not an “awakening” of “mortal tongues?”

America the Beautiful was originally America, a Poem for July 4, written in 1893. It is hard to listen to these stanzas now without thinking of the steady erosion of the natural beauty Katherine Lee Bates saw on her trip across the country and an administration determined to sacrifice natural resources for corporate interests. The “thoroughfare of freedom” trod by “pilgrim feet” was at the expense of the indigenous peoples who already inhabited the “wilderness.” the newcomers were determined to subdue.

O beautiful for spacious skies

For amber waves of grain

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America!

God shed his grace on thee

And crown they good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet

Whose stern impassioned stress

A thoroughfare of freedom beat

Across the wilderness!

America! America!

God mend thine every flaw

Confirm they soul in self-control

Thy liberty in law!

American Tune was written by Paul Simon in 1973, toward the end of Richard Nixon’s presidency. But It is hard not to hear it as a portrait of our times. It perfectly captures the feeling of being battered by the pandemic and the despair of shattered dreams of equality for women and people of color. As we deny people asylum and put children in cages, I am haunted by the image of “The Statue of Liberty sailing away to sea.”

I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered

I don’t have a friend who feels at ease

I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered

Or driven to its knees

Oh, but it’s all right

For lived so well so long

Still, when I think of the road

We’re traveling on

I wonder what went wrong

I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong

And I dreamed I was dying

And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly

And looking back down at me

Smiled reassuringly

And I dreamed I was flying

And high above my eyes could clearly see

The Statue of Liberty

Sailing away to sea

And I dreamed I was flying

I am glad our service paid homage to a country that has given us a great deal, while at the same time giving us an opportunity to acknowledge how much it has withheld from so many. Justice is essential to our values. These songs can be an inspiration to act.