I Pledge Allegiance

As a Sunday School teacher at Wayside Chapel, I began every class with a prayer and The Pledge of Allegiance To The United States.  I talked to my students regularly about our country and their role in it.  If we're not purposefully teaching our children about citizenship and allegiance, they'll not learn it.

It is shameful when any public institution denies, denigrates, or in other ways turn from the flag, our symbol of unity.  If this simple, yet profound symbol, doesn't serve as the visual glue that binds, as the one thing we can all agree on, what then will?  Our own Civil War, that so many want to hide from site and mind, an inescapable fact of history,  should serve as our greatest reminder of the possibilities that present themselves when we turn away from the American Flag, when we deny our common bond.  The horror that is now in the south that is Harvey, has served to demonstrate the might and heart of an American people united for a common cause.

I'm proud to be an American citizen and continue to believe that The United States is the greatest nation on earth.  The reason so many risk everything to come here from other countries is freedom and opportunity to live the life of their dreams.

Together we are strong, divided we are weak and ineffective.

Stand your ground for your beliefs, but let your mind be guided toward unity, not division.  If you protest, let your actions be firm, but peaceful.  These are your fellow Americans that you face in protest.  They have the same American right to their beliefs, as you do yours.  Shouting down a fellow American, visiting violence upon him because you disagree, is never the right thing to do.  Hatred always causes division, hatred is the face of evil, the one thing we should all be united to overcome.

The one thing we all must join to defend is the American right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  If not that, then why are we here, and where shall we go?i

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

The flag of the United States of America flys as the symbol of that "self-evident", long  may she wave.