"I want to hold with you today the greatness of America.
America is not only a place, America is a dream. Let us hold that dream together.
Is America perfect? No, of course America is not perfect. Is America filled with all sorts of flaws? Of course it is, but we have to stand, as Barack Obama said correctly, for the American dream.
We are proud of this country. We are proud of the record of Love, Goodness, Truth, and Beauty backed in blood, sacrifice, and courage that has been the story of America.
America has played a crucial role in standing for and evolving every great social justice ideal. America has fought a civil war to end slavery, ended World War I and World War II, has stood against the moral threat of communism which itself slaughtered more people than, according to many historians, any other single force in history.
America has been home to millions and millions of immigrants that chose it again and again as the home of the free and the land of the brave.
And we challenge this country. We challenge this country for its history - along with the rest of the world - of slavery, we challenge the post-slavery century-and-a-half which was filled with Jim Crow, voter suppression, cruel racism, red lining, lynching, and massive suffering to the descendants of slavery and to the Native American population.
We must end this stain on the greatness of this country even as we must take the lead in challenging and ending slavery around the globe - there being four times as many slaves around the globe today as participated American slavery in the mid-nineteenth century.
I pledge allegiance to the flag. I cry at sports events when the star spangled banner is sung. I sing God Bless America and we must link hands with every single American and bless America together. Every human being in America must be part of the blessing. No one can be left out of the circle.
We have a unique role to play in the Unique Self Symphony and we stand together with every nation of the world, each of us playing our Unique Self instrument in the Unique Self Symphony.
In America and around the world, ethnocentric intimacy must live and love together with worldcentric intimacy.
The only thing that is going to take us home at this moment between dystopia and utopia is a shared story. A shared story is deeper than ethnocentric intimacy. It is a worldcentric story which transcends and includes all of the ethnocentric stories. We are human beings, participating in dignity, before and after we are part of any ethnocentric story. A shared story is not a fanciful conjecture. It’s actually a new set of First Axioms and First Principles."
This blogpost is a direct quotation from Dr. Marc Gafni from our weekly Live Global Communion Service on Sunday at 10 am PT.
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