I traveled to Washington, DC for July 4th this year. It was an exciting trip and an opportunity to honor my parents by attending the Capitol Fourth concert, an event we watched together on television when I was growing up.
I spent most of the day on the 4th walking around, visiting various monuments and memorials. At each stop along the way, I was reminded of the complexity of the human experience. Love and hate. Joy and sorrow. Celebration and mourning. Life and death.
At the Lincoln Memorial, I stood at the place where Martin Luther King, Jr. stood to deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. I thought of the beauty and hopefulness of his words, but also the violence and hate perpetrated on those of color and other minorities in our country, even to this day. The work of Abraham Lincoln continued on the steps of this building dedicated to him 50 years ago, and it still does.
At the Vietnam Memorial, I walked slowly, looking at the thousands of names, sons and daughters killed fighting a war in the jungles of southeast Asia. I began weeping as I thought of every spouse, parent, child, sibling, family member, and friend who experienced the loss of a loved one. The gravity of the ugliness of war weighed heavily on me in that moment.
At the Korean Memorial, the words “Freedom is not free” are engraved on a wall. Sacrifice is almost always part of the cost of freedom. Whether giving your life, your time, your energy, or any other part of what you have or who you are, we must be willing to give to something bigger than ourselves.
At the World War II Memorial, there is a rope connecting the columns for all 50 states, symboling how everyone worked together. And the distance from the Memorial to the Washington Monument is the same distance the troops had to travel when they stormed the beaches at Normandy. If we are going to accomplish anything of importance in this world, our best chance at success is working together, not against each other.
At the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, I read the words of this man and was inspired by his vision to bring a people together, heal a nation (and the world), and communicate hope in the midst of difficulty.
At the Jefferson Monument, I was reminded of the contradictions of all human beings. Here we honor a man who had high ideals and grand dreams for our nation, but also owned and even fathered children with slaves. If we are honest, we all have a little of Jefferson in us, not quite living up to our greatest hopes and desires. Maybe we need to extend a little more grace to each other in light of this reality.
While I visited several other places, the final one I will write about here is the Holocaust Museum. My two hour journey through the history of what happened to the Jews and other groups was truly soul-crushing. At the end of the experience, I sat there and wept. The level of hatred, cold-bloodedness, and evil penetrated my deepest places. How can we human beings treat each other with so much contempt? How can we slaughter millions of innocent men, women, and children, simply because of their heritage or differing beliefs?
I witnessed the best and the worst of us during my short trip to DC. Many of us have incredible dreams, passion, and love. We all also have dark places we hate to admit or even acknowledge sometimes. We are all, to some extent, a mixture of everything I witnessed that day. But that is part of the human experience. I was reminded that one of the most important things is to admit all of it, at least to ourselves, and hopefully to those around us.
If this world is to be a better place, we must own the best and the worst of ourselves, our community, our leaders, our nation, and our world, extending grace to and demanding accountability from every human being we encounter. In our desire for justice, we must not use hate. In our passion for what we think is right, we must not act in ways that contradict our beliefs.
I have grown weary of people hating in the name of love, fighting in the name of peace, and condemning in the name of justice. There are times we must hate things, but never people. There are moments we must fight, but only when truly necessary. And there are actions that we certainly should condemn. But when situations call for such steps, let us still remember that every person is created in the image and likeness of the Creator, even those in the other party, the ones crossing a border, different races, and yes, even those who threaten to attack our nation.
This is the hard work, living in the tension of standing for what we believe while also acknowledging the humanity of every person. But it’s work we must do to move closer to the grand dream of Shalom in the world.
Breaking Into Peace 