Citizens of the Earth

Another Fourth of July has come and gone. Animals and Veterans can rest a bit easier now that the firework hullabaloo is over. I was grateful not to hear fire trucks as sparks flew on parched land. And I wonder how many of those flags were actually made in the good ole USA? There comes a point when learned behavior becomes monotonous. I’ve reached that point with celebrating the Fourth.

I’m much happier acknowledging Juneteenth. And I am all for giving thanks, but please keep the Pilgrim myths out of it. The truth is I’m bored with anything that doesn’t touch my humanity.

I heard the phrase Citizen of the Earth a long time ago and made it my business to understand what that meant. It doesn’t mean you cannot love your country, but it does mean you cannot love it to the exclusion and degradation of others. It doesn’t mean that you cannot take pride in achievements, but when those achievements come on the backs of Black, Brown and Indigenous people historical and contemporary acknowledgments should be given.

Being a Citizen of the Earth means that you take into account your relationship with all of Life. It means you have a right and a duty to question activities that do harm to your life and the lives of all around you. It does not imply that you can impose your will on anyone or anything.

In his Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence speech, Martin Luther King referred to our government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” That “today” continues unchecked. And the sixteen mass shootings over the holiday should tell us the chickens have come home to roost.

We need to become purveyors of peace.