"We also know that life is never static. The one thing you can count on is that things will not remain the same."

Rev. Bonny Gilbert Ashe (Bonny@
UnityInTheFoothills.org) is the minister of Unity in the Foothills. 

Unity in the Foothills is located at 43 Daycoeton Place, Torrington, CT 06790. You can visit their web site at unityinthefoothills.org.

In this nation, we have spent 222 years talking about, singing about, fighting for and standing for freedom. Let's all stand together for a moment and do something that is not a very large part of American life any more. Will you join me in the "Pledge of Allegiance?" And if there is anyone here who is a citizen of another country, know that you are welcome here, and… know that we know your heart will understand as we re-commit to our own.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.

America is. America is so many things. I experienced a bit of America yesterday at a July 4th party followed by fireworks. For some reason this particular holiday is the one I can get the most schmaltzy about. You should see me around fireworks. I react about like an eight year old, jumping up and down and clapping my hands. Part of it is the noise and the beautiful lights. Part of it is a deep and passionate feeling of love and pride for my country. It's a feeling that quite literally sings in my heart. Every nation on earth has value, none greater or less than this one. But this is the one I know. This is the one I live in. This is the one whose history and potential run in my blood and in my spirit, and I thank God for that very often.

If you have ever been to the Smithsonian and seen the Stars and Stripes, the first flag of the original 13 colonies, huge and battle torn, you can't help getting a sense of the passion and love and pride of those who first carried it. If you have ever visited the Holocaust museum in Washington, one of the many things that is unmistakably brought home to your consciousness is how precious and rare and special it is to live in a land whose founding was based on religious freedom. Thank God! Thank God there are other groups that disagree with us, and thank God we disagree with them. And thank God we don't kill each other over it. Thank God we can all stand in one society.

We also know that life is never static. The one thing you can count on is that things will not remain the same. In nature, all creatures, plant, animal and human, are either growing or dying. Economies are either expanding or shrinking. Churches are either growing or dying. Families are either growing closer or drifting apart. Philosophies are either reaching for new and greater ideas, or they are disappearing into the forgotten, dusty volumes in old libraries. The same is true of nations. Right now, our country is either becoming more than ever before, or it is passing into the shrouds of history just the way ancient and once glorious Greece and mighty Rome and so many others have.

No matter what some literalists might tell you, God didn't make those societies die because of their sins. Those societies came to an end because the people in them decided they had reached the pinnacle of perfection and they didn't have to do anything any more but sit back and enjoy it, and maybe defend it against invaders once in a while. The attitude was "We've never had it so good, so why would we want to change anything?" What we know today is that the invaders won. Not because they were better armed or better trained, but because they were alive with dreams and hopes and passion.

So what is it to be for America? Is it beginning to fade, or is it standing on the threshold of a dream, about to burst into new life, and new songs of freedom? That is up to us. In 1776 our forefathers declared freedom from tyranny. Today we fight oppression not from the outside, but from the feelings of apathy and separation within. Do your children know the Pledge of Allegiance? Do they say it at the beginning of every school day, as you and I did when we were young? Do they know what we pledge allegiance to, what that flag represents? The many lives of our heroes, the great love for this land, the dedication and sacrifices and great dreams. Do they know much at all about the history of this land? Do they know they are standing on the shoulders of giants?

Do they know what life was like for an ordinary human before the founding of America? When sharecropper's sons could only become sharecroppers or outlaws. When dreaming great dreams, and reaching for them was reserved for a small group of the elect, and even the few elect were sometimes subject to persecution if their dreams were too daring. Do your children know how far this country has brought the ideas of what is possible in human experience? Do your children know that human experience is created by ideas?

In Unity and in all of New Thought, we teach that everything is created twice. You, eternal spirit that you are, you are first an idea in the mind of God before you ever come into expression in this reality or any other. The chairs that support you here today were first an idea in someone's mind, then that idea was acted upon and finally chairs appeared as the last step in the creative process. This country, any country, was first an idea in some person's mind. A longing for something that did not yet exist. Then more people got the idea, and more, and they began to take action on those ideas, and a nation was born. Everything is created twice, first in the mind, as a thought, then in the outer reality we experience.

Let me repeat something I said earlier. In 1776, our forefathers declared freedom from tyranny. Today we fight oppression not from outside, but from feelings of apathy and separation within. It is feelings of apathy and separation that destroy nations, not marauding armies. The creative power of thought, YOURS, can be used to pull a divine idea from the mind of God and hold it in your mind until something glorious is born, or the creative power of thought can be used to drift into apathy and separation, and hold those in mind until yet another nation ends. Are your children's minds alive with passion for this country, or are they apathetic?

The philosopher, George Santayana said "those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." I'd like to tell you a story about that. A story that was told to me by a man whose nation has less than 1000 people still living, and most of those are ravaged by alcoholism and tuberculosis. His nation is dying, like so many others have in the past.

Once there was a young boy who lived in SE Canada. When he was very young, the woods were filled with game. The fish in the lakes and rivers were plentiful, so plentiful that youngsters played games catching them by hand. No one was without shelter and food and clothing. The children were cared for by the grandparents, and the mothers and fathers farmed and hunted and did the labor that kept their society alive and flourishing.

But life changed before that young boy's eyes during his growing up years. The game diminished. The rivers and lakes became poisoned, and most of the fish died. Much of the forest was cut down, and bare stumps were left sticking up like broken bones on the body of mother earth. By the time the young boy was in his late teens, his heart was filled with rage and pain. He could see his people dying, and he could see more and more of the white society taking over the land that had once been their home. He wanted to go to war against these invaders, but knew his people were too few and to weak. In grief, he went to his grandfather and cried out, "Why? Why?"

To his astonishment, his grandfather told him he was mistaken to blame the white man, so there was no reason for fighting. The white man was merely the instrument of the Great Spirit, taking all the good things away from the people. You see, grandfather explained, once our people loved this earth and all that lives upon it. We treated it with respect and we always remembered to pray. We prayed for the safety and protection of all life. We prayed for the souls of the animals who gave their lives to feed us. We prayed in gratitude for all that we had, and we took care of it.

But then we saw what the white man has, and we decided we wanted that. We wanted radios and cars and jewelry and alcohol. We spent our life force trying to get those things, and we stopped praying. We stopped loving the earth and the creatures that had given us a good life for so long. So now we are losing it all, not because the whites are evil, but because we forgot what is good. We forgot to pray and to honor life.

Gerard Tsonakwa, an Abenaki from SE Canada stood in front of a room full of whites on a spiritual retreat in Spearfish, SD, and said he told us that story so that our people would not make the same mistake that his people made. Because if we forget to honor what is good in our society, if we forget to pray, if we forget to create the goodness in our minds, then we will lose what we have in our outer experience, just like his people did. Apathy and separation is the tyranny we fight.

There have been many mistakes made since the founding of this nation. We have not done everything perfectly. In the beginning freedom was declared only for white, landowning males. Not for women, and certainly not for anyone of color. There was a period during which Irish and Italian immigrants had exactly the same legal status as an African: none. There were laws on the early books that declared them people of color as well. We have not always treated other nations justly either. There have been times in our history when we went to war and killed for wealth, not for justice.

But in spite of all this, the United States of America has changed the world. There have been enough great souls in our history, holding thoughts of freedom, and justice and equality, that in spite of all the mistakes, we have changed the world for the better. We have gone to war and fought with honor against oppressors. We have touched the moon and are reaching for the stars. Freedom! Sharecroppers children become landowners and Senators. This immigrant's granddaughter and would-be priest has not been limited to a life of drudgery. I get to read and write and speak about things that stir my passion! This is the first nation in at least 8000 years to give women the vote, and now they're ordaining us. Freedom! It didn't happen anywhere else first.

When this country began, there were less than 100 religious denominations in the entire world. People were killed for trying to start a new way to know God. In the last 222 years, 9000 have been founded in this country. We are among them. Freedom! Nora and Russell, how many times in the history of the world have a black woman and a white man been part of a partnership that founded a church which is now a welcoming community for all races? 100 years ago, young white men were killing the Lakota nation in our central plains. Today young white men flock to them to learn how to get back in touch with Spirit. Someone held the vision of freedom and the unity of all life in mind as a thought for a long time, and now we are beginning to see the results.

It's not unusual for American soldiers, coming home from foreign lands, to kiss the ground. Why? Because what they have seen around the world has caused them to realize that this is sacred ground we stand upon. I do believe this nation has been called upon, by God, to take humanity into the new millennia. I do believe that the ideas of equality and brotherhood and reverence for life and unity were planted here by the grace of God. We are the ones who are now charged to keep this land holy, we and our children. Let us remember, and teach our children to remember, the history of this sacred ground. Let our thoughts and our prayers be passionately about freedom, respect for all life, and the unity of every living thing. God bless you.

Isaiah: "Why is God mad at us?" -- in his time social injustice was the explanation for the troubles that befell the Hebrews. From the prophet Isaiah we read, "In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together." This nation has been carved out of the wilderness, my friends. The ending of social injustice is our foundation. We can build the new Jerusalem, the city of peace, on this sacred ground. Let's sing our ideas, our thoughts of freedom now. Stand in a circle and join in.

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