Greatness

Photo by Aaron Schwartz from Pexels.com

Have you also wondered how and when we began to become so polarized, so divided, as a people in our so-called United States? Or how our Statue of Liberty’s message is no longer true of our country’s emphasis? We seem more and more given to reject rather than accept refugees, immigrants, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses at our shores: values, words and action we so proudly proclaimed, prior to this last decade.

If, in rejecting those huddled masses at our shore, what if we have silenced a Beethoven or a Mozart among the diverse peoples that seek entrance here? Or what if a poet laureate, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient were among those deported? Or a chess champion who may have drowned close to our shores?

Is it that we continue to think that “they” will deplete our funds, our jobs, our possessions? Might we imagine, at least imagine, how some whom we are rejecting could be the very ones to “make us great again”?

We don’t know where greatness will come from. It seems to me that we deny our own freedom and possibilities when we deny freedom and possibilities to others. Actually we need diversity! Nationalism is debilitating! Refugees and immigrants—throughout our history—have been the answer to establishing new directions in our country.

We create the world we want by the choices we make and the stories we live by. When will we learn that truth again?

Renée Domeier, OSB