In Spite of Everything... Yes!

Yesterday and the day before and the day before that I was definitely feeling down and discouraged that the world had taken another turn for the worse: a storm was bearing down on the people of Haiti hunkered down in their tents... Chaldean Christians had been brutally massacred in a Bagdad church... Three San Diego Somali immigrants, one of them an imam, sent money to help Al Shabab continue terror attacks in Somalia... Another teenager killed herself because she couldn’t take the abuse she got at school and on Facebook for being lesbian. A good policeman was killed in my own city... and on and on the bad news comes... but in spite of everything, I believe:

Yes we can find a way to provide shelter for the homeless and at the same time keep our own good homes. We can find jobs for everyone who wants to work and still keep our own good jobs and our own safe retirement. Yes, we can find a way for hungry people to get food and still have the wonderful breakfasts, lunches and dinners that we enjoy every day. Yes, we can provide medical care for people who are poor and sick and still get the care we need for our own illnesses and the illnesses of the people we love. Yes, we can see that every child has the opportunity to learn in a good, safe school and still send our own kids and grandchildren to whichever schools we choose. Yes, we can comfort bullied and beaten people, and we can help them heal without losing any of the safety and comfort we and our families enjoy in our own places in the world. Yes, we can find ways to help bullies learn not to do harm to others without resorting to behaviors that demean and damage them. Yes, we can affirm people whose sexual orientation is different from our own without losing or damaging our own secure marriages and love relationships. Yes, we can affirm people of religious faiths different from our own without giving up any of our own customs of worship.

Yes! We can!

Да! Мы можем!

Ja! Wir Können!

¡Sí! ¡Podemos!

Oui ! Nous pouvons !

نعم! يمكننا!

In Spite of Everything... Yes!

We can continue to believe in the America Emma Lazarus dreamed about in 1883 when she wrote her tribute to The Statue of Liberty and to America. We can still be what she dreamed we would become... without losing anything.

The New Colossus

Not like brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "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!"