Happy Juneteenth

So much of my life is marked by a holy combination of lament and hope:

“I got it wrong. We got it wrong. But I didn’t stay there and am moving forward and am filled with joyful expectation.”

This idea is at the heart of Juneteenth, the national holiday we celebrate today.

With it, we first acknowledge some of our national sins of the past: state sanctioned slavery, segregation, race and identity-based discrimination, and the generational reverberations today.

Then we celebrate that we didn’t stay there: blood spilled for freedom, emancipation of humans in bondage, enshrinement of civil rights, and a steady, though forever unfinished, arc toward justice.

The unshackling of unjust chains is a centerpiece of the American story: in the treatises of liberty flowing from Philadelphia, on the plantations of South Carolina, in the busses of Alabama, and every day, inch by inch.

Look, dear friend, I don’t want to see you just through the lens of your mistakes and misses and stumbles. But thank you for owning them. It’s better when you own them. Don’t hide. Let us see those wounds and defects together, the pain you’ve suffered and the pain you’ve inflicted.

Because in the process—us together facing the loss and seeing the gain—we get to enter into a deeper intimacy, share in one another’s sorrows, choose gracious understanding, and savor the communal joy of seeing beauty emerge from rubble.

Happy Juneteenth!