Pondering the meaning of the Fourth of July

One of the coolest things that I have been able to do as a photographer is photograph military promotions in the National Archives. My school schedule hasn’t let me do since 2019, but what an honor to be in there with a real camera and to document these special places … you can’t take photos in these rooms unless you have special permission for an event like a promotion. New technology and thinking about the meaning of the Fourth of July inspired me to find them on my hard drives and use the technology to clean them up.

Even though I was trying to feel patriotic today, I am not going to lie… today I’m a bit sadder than I have been on this day in the past and leave myself wondering if we are remotely living out what the men in these picture hoped for. It is not lost on me that there were no women or people of color in these paintings. And now I feel like we live in a country that wants to erase any history of women and people of color. It was not lost on me again that not one person of color was in that photo of people cheering on the passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill” or whatever it is called.

I have had a husband deploy twice for a year at a time because he 100% believed what is written in this room. He believed in the ability of our country to be a force for good… I supported him in those efforts in his entire military career, and we have so many flags and patriotic items in our home and I wonder if they mean the same thing now. I am not sure …

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about experiences of service I had in my late teens and early twenties at Saint Louis University and the service work I did with my students at St. Francis Borgia in the start of my teaching career. Those experiences visiting the ejidos in Mexico, doing Sunday school at St. Matthew the Apostle in the Ville, playing volleyball on the Wind River Reservation, walking around North St. Louis with Fr. Bob Gettinger, taking communion out to people with Sr. Florence at the WInd River Reservation…they changed my core and solidified my beliefs that we cannot be our best in society unless we help those who are most vulnerable.

I did not come from a wealth family myself. My dad lost his grocery store, and he had to declare bankruptcy. My parents lived paycheck to paycheck and somehow found money to send my younger sister and I to Catholic school because they believed those values were important. (They would never have been able to afford it in today’s world.) I remember living in an apartment above an All-State Insurance company in St. Louis and being told my sister and I had to be quiet during business hours. I remember my mom putting our roast beef pot between my bed and my sister’s when it rained to collect the water that dripped and dripped and dripped.

I remember thinking I understood what it mean to not be rich… and then I started volunteering. I saw the poverty in St. Louis and the run-down buildings but the people who had a faith and relationship with God that I envied. I remember going to Mexico during spring break of my senior year of college and thinking how the ejidos I visited made the run-down houses in St. Louis look like castles. I remember feeling God in the joy of the kids playing hacky sack with us outside their ejidos as I wished for better lives for them.

As I watch USAID close, watch Medicaid benefits disappear, and watch people lose food benefits, I feel helpless. And I think I am meant to feel like these problems are so big that I cannot do anything about them.

But that’s why I took a risk today and published a shorter piece of this on my photography platform. If I lose clients, so be it. I am not going to hide that I feel called to help everyone “rise up” … and I loved our country because I thought we had a shared mission in doing that.

Today I’m not sure how I feel … but sadness is definitely part of it. A friend sent me a post on Instagram this morning that stated, “Nobody warns you ¬ that the deeper you care about the world, the harder it is to find joy right now.” I wrote her back and said I feel that so much. Despite this, I am going to spend the day purging things I can donate to Green Drop to help others, I’m going to spend time in prayer and reflection, I am going to teach my kids about our country’s true history, we’ll grill hamburgers and hotdogs, and we may even venture to JBAB to watch the fireworks and listen to Hamilton. I’m going to try to not dwell in my sadness this year.

I am going to keep pondering about what I can do… how I can change the world to keep making it better.

“Rise up! / When you’re living on your knees, you rise up / Tell your brother that he’s gotta rise up / Tell your sister that she’s gotta rise up” – Lin Manuel’s “Hamilton”