I remember the first time I stood at the foot of Lady Liberty. Her official name, Liberty Enlightening the World.
Robed in a cloak representing liberty, she holds a torch above her head with her right hand, and in her left hand carries a tabula ansata inscribed in Roman numerals with “JULY IV MDCCLXXVI” (July 4, 1776), the date of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. A broken chain lies at her feet.
On this day, I began to understand the gravity of what “freedom” truly meant. As I walked the perimeter of Lady Liberty, I heard her calling and her reminder that freedom requires something more than food, family and fireworks.
In a park at the base of Miss Liberty is a statue of a women named, Emma Lazarus, who’s famous 1883 sonnet “The New Colossus” sits in bronze at her feet.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “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!”
The power of this sonnet comes from its radical invitation to a community of inclusion, hospitality and diversity. It redefines liberty.
If you stop and listen, you will hear the clear invitation and calling to act on the gift of the liberty we have been given.
Freedom requires something of us. It requires us to fight for the very thing Lady Liberty stands for – an enlightened world of chain breakers.
#BeAChainBreaker #IndependenceDay2019
What do you think?