The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

“Be kind. It really is important.” – Dr. David L. Walters

One of my dad’s best friends, Pastor William “Bill” Ridgeway, once said, “Life is a journey.” The statement is both simple and profound. Everyday, we travel through life. We make footprints of different sorts as we go along. These rambles and ruminations are the footprints of my journey. I hope you enjoy them. And as I share these footprints, I will try to follow the advice of my college band director, Dr. David L. Walters: “Be kind. It really is important.”
All images copyright Stephen W. B. Rizzo
“Tarantella Americana for Clarinet and Piano” (c) 2021 Stephen W. B. Rizzo

Just to be clear, all comments on this and all of my social media platforms are mine and mine alone. I am not speaking on behalf of any entity, organization, or individual with whom I am otherwise associated or employed, etc. Gotta love our litigious society!

Sometimes Your Second Favorite Pastor’s Name is Harv

In the summer of 2021, my second favorite pastor resigned the pastorate of my home church to take another in Florida. I had known Victor Massey since we were young. Our fathers were ministers together, long before Victor became my second favorite pastor. I said he was my second favorite since my dad, Bucky Rizzo, was a pastor and will always be my favorite. But until August of 2021, Victor Massey was my second favorite. 

Then my church had a rather lengthy pastoral search while Pastor Lane Sargent, one of our retired former pastors, served as our interim and my second favorite pastor for about ten months. During that time the deacons prayed to find God’s will for who our pastor should be. Different individuals in the congregation indicated they believed it was God’s will for this one or that one to be our pastor. Yet I do not believe God cares. I do not mean God is unconcerned, but having given us free will he provides us opportunities to make wise choices and will give us wisdom in the process according to James 1:5. I really do not see that there is scriptural support to indicate that God has one particular person selected for every pastoral position or most any other role in the church or government or community or anywhere else. The task is not to ascertain the elusive and secret will of God. Instead, scripture teaches that we are much more responsible for our decisions and the consequences of our choices than we might like, which is why we should pray for wisdom. 

With that theological understanding, I prayed for wisdom and when the pastoral vote was taken, I voted for someone whom I felt met the scriptural guidelines of a pastor and would be a good match for our congregation. But that is not who was selected. Instead in March 2022, Harv Turner became my second favorite pastor. Along with Pastor Harv, his wonderful wife Kelley became a part of our church family. Shortly after, his father, a retired minister himself, and his mother joined the congregation. And we are working to entice his son, daughter-in-law, and daughter to move to Sumiton. 

I like Pastor Harv, my second favorite pastor. He is personable and a tad high energy. Early on, I noticed that he calls the names of members of the congregation as he preaches. It is a rhetorical device to engage the congregation, a way to connect new faces with names, and sometimes just something fun to do. Mine was one of the names he called, and I began to rib him about it on social media, keeping a tally of how many times he mentioned me. He was good natured and played along. 

Recently Pastor Harv ran into me at lunch on campus. (He tried to sneak away, but I caught him.) We shared a meal and a conversation, which ran the gamut. Partly we talked about his experiences as a pastor, his father’s, my father’s, and even mine as a past music pastor. My dad more than once said that pastoring should be one of the most enjoyable jobs in the world, but people – Christians – make it difficult. The Apostle Paul surely knew this, which is why in 1 Thessalonians 5:13 he admonishes “to esteem them [pastors and church leaders] very highly in love for the work’s sake. And be at peace among yourselves.” In the conversation with Pastor Harv, I alluded to this scripture. I try to follow it, though I know at times I have failed. But this is the way my favorite pastor raised me. 

I certainly hope I demonstrate my love and respect for Pastor Harv, whether he calls my name in his sermons or not. But I think he will keep calling my name. If you are a believer and live in the area but do not have a pastor, come meet mine. His name is Harv. I think you would like him if you met him. 

On the other hand, if you are not a believer you need a savior. His name is Jesus. I know he has been calling your name much longer and with deeper love than Pastor Harv has been calling mine. And you would love him if you met him.

I Drink Coffee Now…

My dad’s family is Greek and Italian, two cultures with coffee traditions dating back for centuries. 

Greek coffee is strong. It is made in a special pot called a briki. A briki is a small copper pot. Fine ground coffee is placed in it. As the coffee boils, a foam forms at the top of the briki while the grounds settle to the bottom. Greek coffee is meant to be enjoyed slowly and savored. 

Americans tend to be more familiar with Italian coffee, particularly espresso. (My daughter will be quick to correct you. “It’s espresso, not expresso!”) Espresso is also made with fine ground coffee, which is then combined with very hot water under pressure. This is what causes that characteristic hiss from an espresso machine. 

But a cultural connection to coffee is not why I drink it, although it is amazing what you can find when you Google something.   

My mother and grandmother drank coffee all my life. Well, actually my grandmother took a little coffee with her milk is a more accurate description. 

But a family tradition is not why I drink coffee.

I drink my coffee decaffeinated and black with a spoon of local honey. (According to my doctor, the local honey can help with my allergies.) Since my coffee is decaffeinated, I do not drink it for an energy boost. Supposedly there are health benefits to coffee, but that’s not why I drink it. (I could just take the honey straight without the coffee.) And it certainly is not the taste! I cannot stand the taste of coffee. 

So why do I drink coffee?

Because I am old enough.

I used to joke that I was not old enough to drink coffee. But this year I had one of those birthdays, you know, that kind that ends with a zero. So I figure maybe now I am old enough. 

Zero birthdays mark milestones. 

The first zero birthday marks the beginning of double digit birthdays. It is a big, round number that sets you apart from the other kids. With the second zero birthday you leave your teens and begin to move toward adulthood, at least hopefully, though in our Western culture of affluence, at twenty just as at ten most are not thinking about anything or anyone beyond the moment and themselves. They are just enjoying life. They are free with limited responsibilities, and I suppose there is nothing wrong with this. 

Of course, by the time the third zero birthday rolls around, you really should not be living in your parents’ basement. You are thirty; you are grown now. Get a job! Somewhere after that second one and definitely by the third, most people are still focusing on themselves but in terms of career and family. The next several zero birthdays seem to come faster and faster and with more responsibility and change. 

For example, on my last zero birthday I had just become a single parent with the custody of two young children. (This is when I probably should have started drinking caffeinated coffee because I needed the energy.) Life was busy and very uncertain. In fact, the only certainty was the knowledge that my job was to focus on raising my two children and everything else centered around that. It made differences in my career choices, my friendships and associations with others, virtually every aspect of my life was touched and re-focused on them, and it has been that way for the last decade. I am not complaining. I have said repeatedly that dad is my favorite job. But it is work. There was homework and band practice and recitals and more homework and teacher conferences and homecoming dances and more even homework and first dates and everything that goes with raising children. My involvement in my church and community was focused on helping my children engage and making those areas better for my children. Hopefully, anything I advocated for helped others as well. But the reason I showed up to the band boosters and parent teacher organization meetings was because of Nick and Olivia. Yet now, they are almost grown and on their own, having both now celebrated two zero birthdays. 

So as I greeted my most recent zero birthday, it was with the realization that my kiddos were nearly grown and the compelling task of most of my existence was almost complete. Of course, I will always be their dad. You never outgrow your father, even after he is gone. But you do grow into a different relationship with your parents. I recognized my kids were almost there. And in the process, I began to wonder who I was and what was next. Yeah, I know this is a first-world problem, but it is still a problem. 

I struggled through it a bit, and then I started drinking coffee because I was finally old enough. In fact, I was several zero birthdays old enough. 

About this time, one of my Greek friends shared a picture of figs from a tree that his dad had brought from Greece. His dad had long since passed, but his children, grandchildren, and great-grand children were still reaping the fruits of his labor. I responded to him with a Greek proverb: “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit.” By the way, I am not old, but it helped me begin to frame my thinking about this zero birthday and beyond.

Similar to the wisdom of this proverb, there is a passage in Genesis that is often lost on those who are not from the Middle East: “Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there called on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God” (Genesis 21:33). The tamarisk tree is sometimes called a salt cedar. It is well-adapted for inhospitable climates and can grow into a large tree that provides shade from the heat of the sun. But Abraham was not going to sit under the shade of the tree. Even the long life of a Biblical Patriarch would not be long enough for the tree to grow to full maturity to provide shade for Abraham. Instead, Abraham planted the tree trusting God’s promise that the land it was planted in would belong to his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and generations to come. I wonder what Abraham pondered about the fulfillment of God’s promises as he watered and tended the tree as a young sprout. 

So now I drink coffee, my version of a tamarisk tree. It reminds me that between now and the next zero birthday to keep doing what I have been doing. From the outside, it probably will not look all that different. I will still work to improve my community. I will remain involved with the local school system, to the delight or dismay of the school administrators. I will continue to communicate with my elected officials. I will participate in my church, hoping to make it better, not just for me or even my kids but for generations yet to come. 

Realizing my life and my work is not just about me helps me take this zero birthday in stride. I do not mean to aggrandize. After all, I am just drinking coffee, planting trees, and trusting in the promises of God.

Merry Christmas 2022

Christmas Memories

I have a vivid memory of riding down Highway 78 with my grandfather in his 64 Impala listening to Christmas carols to the illumination of the emerald green dashboard light.

I remember racing Evil Knievel action figures down the stairs with my cousins at my aunt’s and my uncle giving us all silver dollars in Christmas cards.

I remember as a child gathering on Christmas with my great-grandmother’s family and as a dad spending Christmas at the Chattanooga Choo Choo with my kids.

I well recall shinning silver tinsel trees, electric candles in the windows, Santa pictures at Pizitz, paper chain link garlands, nativity displays, mistletoe, wassail, fruitcake cookies, baklava, and after the Church Christmas pageant brown paper bags filled with oranges, apples, and nuts.

This year from my family to yours, may you make Christmas memories to cherish for years to come!

The accompanying photo titled Weihnachtspyramide, 2022, was taken in Cullman, Alabama, of the largest Christmas pyramid in the United States.

Merry Christmas 2021

“Christmas Gifts”

Silver bells ringing, chestnuts roasting, reindeer prancing
Sleigh bells jingling, lords a-leaping, sugar plums dancing

A one horse open sleigh to ride; Church bells to play their old familiar carols
A Red Ryder to shoot your eye out; Pa rum pum pum pum a drum to tap
A whistle and a ball and a whip that cracks

Angels we have heard on high
And a crutch in the corner with no owner

Tannenbaum, holly, mistletoe
Fruitcake, nutcracker, snowman
One spear, three spikes, five wounds

(The accompanying photo titled An Old Fashion Christmas was taken in U.G.White Hardware in Athens, Alabama.)

Hymns

Over the last year, I’ve dusted off my trumpet. (Actually, I bought a new one. Thanks, Pastor Roger Daniel, for letting me try yours and, Scott Berry, for letting me buy one of yours.) And I’ve dusted off my composition and arranging skills, or at least I’m trying to. This arrangement of “Crown Him With Many Crowns” and “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” is a product of that. For the time being, this computer generated version will have to suffice until I can get a “real” recording made. (Pat Bowden and Cheryl Crauswell, thanks for the feedback on the piano accompaniment.)

This arrangement (c) 2021 Stephen W. B. Rizzo

I love hymns! I love to sing them and to play them. Unfortunately, the church tradition I grew up in used what is traditionally called gospel or convention or camp meeting songs but precious few traditional hymns. I was introduced to the vast corpus of traditional hymns of the Church in high school by two people. One was my high school  choir director Marla Wilson. (I was introduced to the quadratic equation and pressure on the trapezius muscles by her husband Jerald, which is a story for another day.)  The other was my band director and now long-time friend Allen Bailey. 

My senior year in high school, I was in Teen Talent, a talent competition hosted by the Church of God (Cleveland) to foster participation in the arts as a means of worship and ministry. Allen arranged “Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us” and “The Church’s One Foundation” for trumpet and piano and accompanied me. I fared well in the various levels of competition, but  the real win was in getting to know these hymns that remain two of my favorites. 

Not to make this a music class, but hymns for the last few centuries tend to be strophic, syllabic, and homophonic. This is a generalization. Different church traditions adhere to or diverge from it. Of course, the primary purpose of hymns is praise and worship of God. I recall Dr. David Horton’s  (Lee University) discussion of traditional hymns, how they extoll or proclaim the attributes of God or make affirmations of faith. Generally speaking, they tend toward a more corporate than individual expression of worship. Also, they are chock full of theology, much more so and much more sound than gospel songs or contemporary worship choruses. In fact,  Dr. Timothy George of Samford’s Divinity School recalls his days of seminary and how various professors would parse the lines of the hymns and joined in or refrained from singing certain verses because of their theological content. I fear today we too often glibly sing along to contemporary church music because of the catchy rhyme or repetitive hook but give no thought to the Biblical validity – or lack thereof – of the lyrics. But hymns provide the depth of Biblical truth set to tune. 

Finally, some of those tunes and verses stretch back hundreds and hundreds of years. The melody of “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” dates back to the early Baroque. (Today, most are probably familiar with Bach’s chorale setting of the melody, but Hans Leo Hassler is actually responsible for the melody that is used for German and English settings of the hymn.) The lyrics date back to a Latin hymn Salve mundi salutare from the Middle Ages that speaks of the physical sufferings of Christ during the crucifixion. Therefore, when we sing this hymn we are singing a melody from 500 years ago during the heart of the Protestant Reformation with lyrics from the Middle Ages during a time of suffering and uncertainty when some fifty percent of Europe died from the Black Plague. Yet, this is more than an exercise in history. It is a recognition that the same pepituary death of Jesus 2000 years ago unites us as His Body, across time, geography, language, and culture. 

I still respond to the camp meeting songs I grew up with and see validity in worship choruses, both of which are a more personal expression of praise. But if these are the appetizer and dessert, the hymns are the main course, musically and theologically. If you participate in a worship tradition that uses hymns, don’t sing them dispassionately but do so with fervor and listen to the lessons of the faith contained in their lines. If you do not use hymns in your worship, may I invite you to consider adding them and join with your brothers and sisters in Christ who have sung hymns for hundreds of years to declare His majesty and love.

Cucuzza

Last week we had a diversity event on my college’s campus, and I was asked to prepare a booth on Italian-Americans. Since October is Italian-American Heritage Month, I thought I would share some of it as a blog as well. (Oh, and I’ve included a tarantella to put you in the right mood while you read.)

“Tarantella Americana for Clarinet and Piano” (c) 2021 Stephen W. B. Rizzo

There’s a litney of contributions by Italian-Americans I could have shared and a long list of names, nationally and locally, all of whom deserve recognition. But instead, I opted for something more basic, something we share, something that reflects us as a group – good, hearty, and comforting food. 

As with other immigrants, when Italians came to America most were leaving behind a difficult life in hopes of a better future. The bulk of Italians who made the Atlantic crossing were mezzogiorni  or Southern Italians, which reflected the historic reality that Southern Italy was significantly less prosperous than Northern. While in Italy, they lived and made the most of what they had. An example of this is the cultivation of cucuzza, an edible gourd that can grow up to five feet in length. 

The plant requires little space when trellised and is a prolific producer.

Southern Italians made the most of the plant, consuming both the gourd and its tender shoots and leaves.

Tenerumi

Tenerumi is made from the (deveined) leaves and tender shoots sautéed with garlic. Cucuzza can also be incorporated into soups and stews, stuffed, breaded and fried as a stand-alone dish or incorporated in cucuzza parmigiana, or served raw in salads.

As they immigrated, Italians brought the seeds with them. Today, it’s not uncommon to find cucuzza in the gardens of Italian-Americans across the country.  

Cucuzza Stew

If you are fortunate enough to have an Italian-American neighbor who grows cucuzza, ask for one. Trust me, they will have extras. Like I said, these plants produce. If you’re not as fortunate, then you can probably find cucuzza in a market that specializes in Mediterranean food or sometimes in Asian markets as well.)

Ingredients

One large cucuzza (3 or 4 feet long)
A large bunch of carrots peeled and chopped or large bag of baby carrots.
Three or four garlic cloves chopped
Two large (28 ounces) cans of petite diced tomatoes
(Fresh tomatoes are better if they are homegrown. But don’t use the tasteless ones you get from most groceries.)
Optional – one large can of tomato puree
Oregano, salt, and pepper
You can also add celery, potatoes, etc., pretty much veggie that strikes your fancy, of course. Adding stew meat is also an option.

Directions

Peel the Cucuzza. Slice it down the middle longways. Clean out the soft  interior with seeds. I usually use a spoon to scoop this out. Then cut the cucuzza into roughly half inch cubes.

In a ten quart soup pot or crockpot, combine cucuzza, carrots, diced tomatoes, and garlic.

Add dried or fresh chopped oregano, salt, and black pepper to tastes. (I really like oregano, so I tend to add a little extra.) Add two to four cups of water as needed water. 

You will probably need to cut the acid of the tomatoes. For this batch, I used about a tablespoon of sugar. Don’t worry, it does not make it taste sweet. It just balances the acid. There are other options as well. Mr. Maltese, one of my music  instructors from my undergraduate years added raisins to his sauces. I do this for sauces, but tend not to do it for soups and stews. Another trick that I have used is adding a whole, peeled Russet potato, which you remove before serving. Baking soda also could be used.

Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat and simmer until the vegetables are tender. I usually like to let it set overnight to allow, as a friend says, the flavors to marry. 

Buon Appetito!

Buon Natale 2020

And when we have all known the bitter bite of cold

The pain of separation

The longing remembrance of loss

The horror of alienation,

Then may we learn the warmth of the love of Christ

That reunites, restores, and reconciles

Through manger, cross, and empty tomb.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been fortunate to engage in several arts events sponsored by the Walker County Arts Alliance, which has given me the inspiration and opportunity to explore my interest in photography. During that same period, my kids have gotten licenses and now chauffeur themselves around, which has given me a tad more time to pursue my photographic endeavors. Oh, and last but not least, my mentor Alice Wilson has given me ample direction and feedback to help me improve. I’m not there yet, but I’m getting better and having fun doing it. Of course, all of that rambling preamble is simply to say that for my Christmas card this year I got creative and used some of my own work.

The photo accompanying the blog, titled Winter Woods (2009), is one I made several years ago and used this year for the cover of my Christmas card, and the Christmas Meditation is one I included in the card.

No, I’m not about to start creating cards for Hallmark. In fact, I really hope my words reflect the opposite of the too sweet sentiment of Hallmark fare. The photo was for fun. But the meditation is about something more important.

The love of Christ is not a warm fuzzy that rolls around at Christmas and vanishes by New Year. When we truly encounter His love, we will not remain the person we were. To learn of the love of Christ is not just to hear of it, but to be changed by it. We will not do the selfish and self-destructive things we did. Instead, we will live out the new life he gives.

My prayer this Christmas is that you learn of the love of Christ and allow Him to change you from who you were to a new person in Him.  

Somewhere in the Middle

Life happens somewhere in the middle. It’s not at the apex moment of achievement, and thankfully it’s not at the lowest point of tragedy. But it happens somewhere in the middle.

I woke up this morning around 5. My son was already up getting ready to travel with UAB Marching Blazers for a ballgame in Mississippi. He marched with the band last year also. But last year because of Covid, they only marched to their seats in Legion Field. They were not allowed on the field, but continued to play in the stands and support their team and the University. This year, they are back in uniform and in a new stadium. But this morning, the Marching Blazers were in a knapsack on my son’s back, along with an extra bottle of water, some throat lozenges, and some snacks for the trip.

Last year, and I don’t think this will embarrass him, he was a bit trepidatious about driving into Birmingham for practice. Now he zips all over. In fact, he’s driving over early as a part of a service fraternity that is preparing things for the rest of the band to arrive.

We tiptoed quietly this morning because Mother is still at my house. About three weeks ago, she stumbled at home and injured her knee and broke her foot. So for the last several weeks he has stayed with me. Either one of the kids or I have been here with her the whole time. For the first week, she was in a lot of discomfort. But that has subsided. Her foot is healing, and she’s getting more mobile. She’ll be here another week at least, however. Still, she’s much more herself and hilarious without trying. And those of you who know my mother understand what I mean. But right now, she is sleeping.

My little girl is asleep too, except she’s not a little girl anymore, and she’s quick to remind me. But when she’s tired like she was last night, she still curls up on the couch beside her daddy. The kitchen is nice and clean this morning because her stress relief from homework is housework. So every night, I pray that her teachers give her lots of homework. (Let’s not tell her that.)

As the sun comes up, I’ll drink my Metamucil and track my son’s progress toward UAB. When he arrives in the next few minutes, I’ll go back to bed for a while. And then I’ll get up and do something mundane and thank God for life in the middle.

Juneteenth is an American Holiday!

Galveston, Texas, has from the time I was young has been a special place to me. My dad regularly took us to visit his father’s family in Galveston. Galveston held something of a magical, mythical place in my mind. Dad’s family came from Sicily, Italy, and Milos, Greece, in the late 1800 and early 1900s. Coming through the port of New Orleans, a port of immigration at the time second only to New York, the various families finally found their way to Galveston.

I knew about Galveston first-hand growing up spending time with my cousins, going crabbing or just playing on the beach. Oh, and there was that one time when my Maw Maw’s keys got locked in her VW Beetle on the beach in Galveston while the tide was rolling in. So, on Galveston beach I learned the importance of being able to unlock a car with a coat hanger. Of course, I loved Glenn Campbell’s hit song “Galveston” about a solider off at war dreaming of his home and love in Galveston. Like the solider in the song, “I still hear [the] sea waves crashing” in my mind.

I also know a bit about the history of Galveston and that those sea waves crash against a seawall that was constructed after the Great Strom of 1900 that decimated Galveston. In 1900, Galveston was home to many affluent citizens and was a popular up-scale vacation destination. But a hurricane made landfall on September 8, 1900. The death toll for the hurricane numbered in the thousands, but they could not be buried because the land was saturated from the flooding. Burial at sea was attempted. But the bodies floated back in on the tide. Eventually as this became a public health crisis, martial law was declared and men at gunpoint were forced to burn the decaying bodies of family, friends, and strangers. According to my dad’s cousin Benjamin Franklin Biannos, Mitchell Biannos, who was his grandfather and my dad’s great-grandfather, was among those who were required to under take this horrific task.

From Louis Ciaccio, another of my dad’s cousins, I know a more lighthearted story about the family’s “store on three corners.” It was a store run by Louis’ father Vincent with the help of my dad’s Uncle Nick, who was a young man at the time. The building that it occupied was physically moved three different times to three different locations on Galveston island. I know where my dad went to school at Stephen F. Foster Junior High in Galveston. I know where my precious Aunt Catty Mencacci lived just a few blocks from the beach. Though the last time I saw her I was young, I still remember her standing in the yard waving goodbye to us as I suppressed the urge to run back and hug her one more time. In fact, one of my few regrets in life is not running back for the one last hug.   

Another though different type of regret is that as much as I romanticize, love, and know about Galveston, until a few years ago I did not know about Juneteenth, a commemoration of the end of slavery initiated by African Americans in Galveston on June 19, 1866. To be fair, a “few years ago” in my convoluted memory could be two years or two decades. But even if it is two decades ago, that is still late in life for me to learn about such a significant event, not just in the history of Galveston, but in the history of my country. I have been a history buff (OK, geek) since I was a kid. I remember much from my history classes. But I absolutely have no memory of Juneteenth being mentioned in elementary, high school, or even college.

Though it should have been recognized long before, Juneteenth is now an official American holiday, and rightfully so. It is a day that we – collectively – recall that what was wrong with America began at long last to be put right. I am not a fan of many of President Binden’s policies. But I applaud him, the Senate, and all but fourteen members of the House of Representatives for making Juneteenth a national holiday as of June 2021.

For those who do not know, here is a brief history of the date. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation  (https://catalog.archives.gov/id/299998), a wartime executive order, declared that effective January 1, 1863, slaves were free in the states in rebellion against the Union. The eventual military defeat of the armed forces of the Confederacy enforced this act battle by battle and mile by mile. Texas, the most remote extent of the Confederacy, was last to give way to Union advance. On June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and issued General Order No. 3 (https://catalog.archives.gov/id/182778372) that announced the end of slavery in accordance with the provisions of the Emancipation Proclamation.  

But slavery still legally existed in a few states that had not seceded from the Union, and slavery ultimately could have been reestablished across the South. However, the ratification of Thirteenth Amendment on December 6, 1865, declared slavery at an end in America. Then, on June 19, 1866, the anniversary of Granger’s General Order No. 3, African Americans in Galveston publicly celebrated the end of slavery on what they called Jubilee Day. (The term Jubilee, of course, was taken from the Old Testament of the Bible as it was the year that Jehovah commanded the enslaved in Israel were to be set free.)   

I do not care whose granddaddy owned slaves and whose granddaddy did not. The fact is slavery is America’s original sin. As a nation we were born with this deformity. The Declaration of Independence‘s lofty ideals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” stand in stark contrast to the Constitution’s measurement of slaves as “three-fifths” of a person. This stain on the soul of our nation was excised only by the sufferings of generations of our brothers and sisters held in bondage and by the blood of hundreds of thousands in the American Civil War (as if any war could be civil). At great cost this was accomplished. Then should not we – regardless of race or creed or political inclination – exult in this together as one people. 

No, we have not arrived. There is much yet that can be done. Yes, we are very divided. We are divided on what to do and how to do it. But on this date, let us as Americans all celebrate, not what has not been accomplished, but rather what has been. On June 20th, we can again debate a host of things. But today is a day of remembrance, a day of Jubilee, a day of celebrating the end of the enslavement of one group of Americans by another.

Juneteenth is an American holiday!