may god save us all

I was raised as a bible-believing patriot.

I am not surprised by the nation I live in today.

It is as familiar as my own 15-year-old face staring back through the mirror.

A reflection that believed the United States was founded as a Christian nation. That 15-year-old wrote a letter to the editor: “If we no longer believe in God, no longer will we have our liberties.”

I no longer believe in that god and I am freer than I’ve ever been.

I learned ancient Hebrew in seventh grade, the way the letters curve and dash across the page. We were god’s second chosen people alongside the Israelites - Americans, white, Christian - after all.

Now I sheepishly explain my Hebrew name and send money across the broken seas to dying Palestinian children because two “chosen people” choose violence instead of peace.

I am still paying penance for the violent words and money won for red words on white pages speaking of life. I knew nothing of life, the way choice is a light in the murk of disempowerment.

Today I wear a whistle around my neck on the streets of Chicago because I will never again bargain with another’s freedom.

For I too am the great-grandchild of immigrants named Katherine and Jacob and Petronella and Adriana and Pieter and Kristoff and Anton the boy who stowed away to America.

And Annie. My great-grandmother who suddenly lost her citizenship to a law making women the nationality of their husbands. She became a traitor - no longer a citizen of the country she was born in, an immigrant in her own land.

There is no purity in a melting pot of dreamers - only magnificent diversity.

There is no righteousness in a nation built not on the “Word of God” but on stolen land and broken backs, in tenements and racetrack barracks, on bloody battlefields and secret detainment centers.

Perhaps in the Sam Adams quote I wrote in that letter to the editor, “Once the people lose their Virtue, they will be ready to surrender their Liberties,” virtue didn’t mean hands on bibles and god in allegiances, but a belief that all are created equal and deserving of human rights.

If that’s revolutionary, may god save us all.