The 4th of July

Every Fourth of July, I think about how easy it is to inherit something extraordinary and slowly forget to be amazed by it.

America is imperfect. It always has been. The people who signed the Declaration knew they were making a promise bigger than the country they actually had. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” they wrote, “that all men are created equal.” That sentence was not fully true in 1776. But it was powerful enough to become a standard we would keep being called back to.

That is part of what makes this country worth loving. Not because it has always gotten everything right. Because it gave us language for what right should look like.

Lincoln understood that too. At Gettysburg, in the middle of a war that nearly tore the country apart, he spoke of “a new birth of freedom” and a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” That is still the work. Not finished. Not automatic. Not someone else’s responsibility.

On the Fourth, I am grateful for the ordinary blessings that come from living here: the right to speak, worship, build, disagree, start over, raise a family, open a business, vote, argue about what matters, and still belong to the same country.

I am grateful for front porches and backyard tables, for neighbors who wave even when they vote differently, for kids chasing sparklers, for flags on small-town streets, for veterans standing quietly during the anthem, for families who came here looking for room to breathe.

Patriotism does not have to be loud to be real. Sometimes it is simply remembering that freedom is rare, fragile, and worth tending.

Happy Fourth of July.

May we be worthy of what we inherited.