I'm particularly proud of the flag picture below this entry. It's the flag outside my local post office. The other day, I noticed it and thought it would make a good picture. But that's not the reason I'm proud of the photo.
      Today, after reading Trixie's blog, I needed to go and take the photo. I had to step in the street and dodge traffic to get that shot of it hanging in that perfect blue sky.
      Better people than me have written about our flag and what it means. Freedom. Liberty. Pride. Courage. It holds all those things, but it also holds something else for me. That something else was why I needed to take the photo today.
      We are a flawed nation; I'll admit that. We fight among ourselves over race, sex, gender. We wrestle with a nationwide drug problem. We eat too much. We ignore the poor. We turn aside and put off problems and leave them for our children. We have corrupt politicians and corrupt police. We damage the environment in ways we can't even imagine ever being able to fix. We are not kind to those who are different.
      But.
      But we also try to do better. We work at it. We try to learn new things. We go to church, we serve in soup kitchens, we rise up to help hurricane and tornado victims. We risk our lives for people we don't know. We offer program after program to help addicts. We send our children to college and try to give them a better life than what we had. We vote out corruption, and brave officers battle it from within. We plant trees, buy dolphin-safe tuna and recycle everything we can. We walk in parades and hold out our hands and try to meet those who are different halfway.
      And when we fail, we learn from it. We get up and try again. Unlike other peoples and nations, we keep trying. We believe in solutions. We believe in peace. We believe in basic human rights. We're hard-headed in this because our hearts won't let us be any other way.
      We believe in freedom.
      That's a hard thing for a flag to carry. Hard for anything to carry. Probably it wouldn't be able, except for that something else it also embodies:
      Hope.
      Our flag means hope.
      It holds the promise of a better life.
      It's a visible symbol of a brighter future.
      A reminder of glorious possibilities.
That's why I wanted to take its picture today. To remind myself in this terrible world where the innocent are slain by cowardly monsters ... to remind myself, that there is still hope.
      Hope.
      And I tell you now that we will yet rise to greet a new wondrous world.

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