Gratitude for Freedom

With the election season finally over, we can begin celebrating the holiday seasons in earnest.  I've been secretly listening to Christmas music since August and I've begun posting my daily gratitudes.  My gratitude for freedom of religion is so much larger than a tweat or a tiny post on Facebook.  This country was founded upon religious freedom and many have lost their very lives in defending it. 

In the seventeenth century, pilgrams immigrated from Europe, seeking a land where they could practice their religion freely and as they believed, not as dictated by their government.  Many were running from the belief and practice that there was one true religion and that it was the duty of the civil authorities to impose it, forcibly if necessary, in the interest of saving the souls of all citizens. Nonconformists could expect no mercy and might be executed as heretics.  As with most pioneers, the pilgrams suffered illness -- scurvy, pneumonia, malnutrition, hyopthermia.  But the suffering was for a higher purpose, to be able to worship their God as they believed and to create a place for their posterity to worship freely.

Our country hasn't been perfect in accepting all people.  In the 1800's, Mormons were burned out of their homes and driven from their communities, their prophet martyered by a flash mob.  Before this, African slaves were shackled and brought to a strange land, only to be imprisoned by white slave-masters and for many years after, treated as inferior citizens, unable to share a common drinking fountain or to use the front door at a public restaurant.  The struggle for freedom in this country has been turbulent.  But I believe that this country was sanctified by the Lord as a place of refuge for all. Hard fought, we are a country of safety for people all over the world. 

As a young adult, I met a friend who was of the Baha'i faith, a religion originating in the Middle East with a religious tenet of peace and love of all people.  She introduced me to other members of her faith who had fled Iran due to religious persecution.  I met with several of her Baha'i friends in someone's living room (in lieu of churches, they meet in homes of members) at what they referred to as a "fireside".   An older couples shared their story of fleeing their country, running for their very lives and the ability to worship their God as they believed.  This particular family was blessed to have the means to leave--many had no way out and were killed or imprisoned.  As I sat in the living room of these people who were strangers to me, they showed a slide show of pictures they had taken as they fled their country.  The picture that will remain forever burned in my mind is that of several Persian Baha'i's, hanged along telephone poles.  They were left on display as a warning to anyone who dared stray from the main religion of the country.  The photos made me feel sick in the pit of my gut, to think that such ugliness and hatred existed in the world.  Until then, I thought such things were only part of a history book, not things that happened in a modern world. 

And so, as Americans, we open our doors to the tired, the poor, the persecuted.  This is why this country is great, sanctified by our God as a resting place of hope and peace and a land of the free.  So I close this post with the words of Emma Lazarus:

 "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!"

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