Can we give birth, again, to the dream?

.... With courage? With grace? For Real? For ALL?

Photo by Barth Bailey on Unsplash

As a (thoroughly tone-deaf 7-year old) child, my first choir experience was learning and singing Irving Berlin’s song based on "The New Colossus." You can listen to it here (and I can’t tell you how much I love that this is from the old Ed Sullivan show!): "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" The poem was written in 1883 by American Emma Lazarus and is etched in bronze and mounted on the Statue of Liberty's pedestal.

"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!"

Many years later, I heard Maya Angelou recite her “On The Pulse of Morning”.

You can read the full text here: The Pulse of Morning.

And maybe, today, let these words speak to our collective hearts?

History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again….

Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness….

Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, and into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope—
Good morning.

Today? Today can we at least do that?