Independence Day

A few years back, Nancy and I went back and forth about a piece I was going to post on SixSeeds.tv, of which she was the primary content editor.  We were arguing about what to call it when my kids and I brought food to homeless people in our neighborhood.  I wanted to call it justice; she wanted to call it charity.  It was maddening, neither of us able to really understand where the other person was coming from.  Or perhaps more accurately, we assumed that we did understand and thought the other was a misguided loser.

She is a true-blue Republican.  I’m practically a socialist.  Her husband David writes political pieces that infuriate me.  They act like Jesus loves their positions on everything. I hate those kind of people.

Too bad I am one of those people.

All of this to say that I went into reading their latest book, Home and Away, with a bit of trepidation.  After 9-11, David decided to leave his cushy law job to join the army and go to Iraq.  Nancy stayed home to hold down the fort for the year he was gone.  Hold down the fort and work for the Mitt Romney campaign.

You can see why I was worried.  Because even though Nancy is warm and brilliant and hilarious, I didn’t think I could stomach a pro-war, America-right-or-wrong, love story.

I was wrong to worry.  I winced more than a few times when the politics hit me the wrong way, but it was a wise, funny page-turner.  It was about war, and marriage, and church, and kids, and calling.  And I loved it.

As I sit here in Maine with my college friends, waiting to kill lobsters and celebrate our independence, I’m left thinking about patriotism.  In particular, I’m thinking about what to teach my boys about their country and how to love their country.

I was born on an Air Force base.  Two uncles and cousin served in the military.  My dad was an Air Force bomber pilot who proudly hung the flag and reminded me that millions of fellow Jews died because they couldn’t defend themselves.  I’ve always understood that my pacifist beliefs are conveniently defended by those who don’t share them.

Visiting Plymouth with the boys this semester filled me with awe at the brave people who started the United States.  Their courage, their ideas, their hard work, were all humbling. But I was never unaware of the Wampanoag village around the corner, a reminder that “the land of the free and the brave” came at a price that no one should have paid.

In Jamestowne, learning of the meteoric growth of the colony after the introduction of tobacco, I was painfully aware that the growth led to the introduction of African, chattle slavery.

I cry every time I go to vote, aware of both the privilege and what it cost to enjoy it. Who it cost, really.  Millions of Native people, and slaves, and American soldiers.  It’s almost too much to bear.

What I think I want the boys to know about their country and their world, and what came through most powerfully for me in Home and Away, was that our children are not at the center of the world, or even our world.  There are things worth leaving our children for, even dying for.

Often those things are related to Home — our home in God, our families, our neighbors. The truth is, I won’t get to chose what those things are for the boys.  After all, homeschooled or not, it’s not called Independence Day for nothing.