“Freedom isn’t free,” we’re reminded every 4th of July and other national holiday.  Veterans are applauded at parades and honored at civic events. We rightfully remember the honored dead who fought for our country. Freedom isn’t free. But it’s not just soldiers who die for it and it’s not just military who fight for it.

November 10, 1917 was dubbed “The Night of Terror” by suffragettes. 33 women who were protesting outside the Whitehouse for the right to vote were arrested and then beaten, clubbed and tortured by the guards at the Occoquan Workhouse. (Read more about the Night of Terror)

 “Rev. George Lee, one of the first black people registered to vote in Humphreys County, used his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote. White officials offered Lee protection on the condition he end his voter registration efforts, but Lee refused and was murdered.” May 7, 1955, Belzoni, Mississippi (Taken directly from the Civil Rights Martyrs web page of the Southern Poverty Law Center where you can read more stories.)

Sylvia Rivera was a veteran of the Stonewall uprising and a tireless advocate for the rights of transgender and transvestite people, particularly as the gay rights movement became more main stream.

Freedom isn’t free. We all a debt to many who have tirelessly fought, struggled, suffered, and died so that our country would live up to its promises. Today we should also remember all those who worked and died for civil rights for African Americans, women and the LGBTQ community. We should tell these stories on national holidays and incorporate them into our country’s celebrations. These are the people who shaped our country as much as Washington, Jefferson, and Adams. Let us honor them by working to ensure our country really is the “home of the free.”

It seemed so easy on Easter Sunday, didn’t it? I don’t mean the worship service. That took weeks of planning and practice by our chancel choir, musicians, contemporary music ensemble, the arts team, and a host of volunteers.  I don’t mean my sermon. I worked hard to make it relevant, funny (but not like I was trying too hard to entertain), heart tugging (but not saccharine) and pithy.  I don’t mean the packed-in crowd that made it feel like church was the cool thing to do and we don’t wrestle with how to provide ministry to busy people with volunteers who are also busy people.

What seemed easy was our certainty. We sang Christ the Lord is risen today! Al-le-lu-ia! Sons of men and angels say, Alleluia!and Up from the grave he arose, with a mighty triumph o’er his foes…I may have even fist pumped the air. Without a hint of doubt we responded to the proclamation, “Christ is risen!” with the exclamation, “Christ is risen indeed!” It was glorious.

But we aren’t always that certain, are we? In our heart of hearts we respond to “Christ is risen!” with a question mark, “Christ is risen? Indeed?” Part of our difficulty may be that we can’t quite reconcile the mechanics of the story with what we know about science. Faced with a miracle we do what we always do, try to find a rational explanation. But more troubling are the days when we don’t see any evidence that Christ is risen. We hear “Powerless love conquers loveless power” (William Sloane Coffin) on Sunday morning, and then watch the news Sunday night.

I want my faith to be bold and unabashed. More often I follow Jesus the way I enter the ocean – testing the water one toe at a time. I think God has room for lots of ways of following – tentative and reckless, full of exclamation marks and littered with question marks. I am grateful, though, for those glorious moments when a life of faith feels like when we’re all singing Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus in a packed sanctuary.

We were all in the same position – head and shoulders on the white paper table cloth that my friend and I had purchased at the Shop N’ Save, along with sandwiches, our knees bent, wearing our eclipse glasses and watching the discs in the sky. We had traveled to be in the path of totality and had all wound up at Jokerest Memorial Park in Festus, Missouri. I had come with a friend. The family with whom we shared our make shift blanket had come from Evanston. The five of us, along with the hundred or so people in the park, watched together as the moon slid in front of the sun. We pointed out to one another the changing shadows as the sun shone crescents through the leaves. We remarked at how bright the day was with only a sliver of the sun, and yet how different the light was – subdued somehow. Someone pointed out the pink and gold tones along the horizon all around us; we were surrounded by sunset. We noted the change in temperature and exclaimed when the cicadas began to hum. And then, with our heads and our shoulders on the white paper tablecloth and our faces pointed toward the sky together we took in one breath as the moon clicked in place in front of the sun to be rimmed with a silver halo. We all applauded. My eyes filled with tears. I knew, as I lay on that white paper tablecloth with a friend and with strangers, that we were on a planet spinning through space together, mere specs in the solar system which we did not create and cannot control, united by our common humanity.

A woman across the aisle and one seat ahead of me on the Metra train from the suburbs into Chicago was telling her friends about recently tattooing her eyebrows. She pointed to her brows’ exquisite arch and fullness. As she described the aesthetician drawing every brow hair I rolled my inner eyes and felt entirely inadequate. I hadn’t showered. My face was naked as a baby’s bottom but not nearly as smooth. I could feel a stress zit popping out on my right nostril and knew that a lighted mirror would reveal pours big enough to swim in. The bounce of Eyebrow’s leopard print hair scarf made me acutely aware of my upper arms. I tried to remember if I had put on deodorant.

Eyebrow was surrounded a swarm of young women heading to a party, to fun, to an adventure together. Their French tip manicures fluttered in the air, their perfectly white teeth flashed and the sun glinted off their lip gloss. They all drank white wine out of cans. I wondered where they learned all that, all that art of being female.

I glanced down at my chipped pedicure and calloused heals. I pulled my sweater to hide my paunch. The salad I made for the party had leaked all over the inside of my backpack. Eyebrow was the queen bee of a girls’ night out. I would walk into a room of friends and strangers alone, again, and would want to leave as soon as I arrived.

One of the swarm made a joke and Eyebrow kicked up her right foot in glee. I saw a flash of white on the sole of her stylish platform sandal. It was a perfectly square sticker, a price tag from a discount shoe place, from DSW or Nordstrom Rack. I had found the chink in her perfection. I rolled my eyes at my glee at finding it. I extended forgiveness to her, of which she had no need. And to myself, of which I did.