Dear America, I still believe in you. Let me count the ways

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Dear America,

On Tuesday, November 5, we will elect our 47th president to lead you, our great nation. I do not know what the future holds, but I write to you as someone who sees both your brilliance and brokenness. Most of all, I write to you as someone who still believes in you.

It has been my great fortune to be born an American. I have been blessed with a life that has taken me from the rough streets on the South Side of Chicago where I minister to people in the highest offices of the land. I have seen equalities, inequalities, the love, the hate, the peace, the violence, the urban, the pastoral, and throughout it all I have never lost one belief: I still believe in you, America.

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From the CEO offices in the sky to one of my ex-gangbangers landing his first construction job, I have witnessed the best of you — the way you reward merit, the way you prize resilience, the way you value individualism, and the way your people, strangers often, step forward with a helping hand.

It is this latter quality of yours that warms my heart the most. That ex-gangbanger that I just mentioned was trying to survive and put food on the table for his kids when he told me he was not going to take the construction job I helped him get. I looked at him, “Why not?” The man told me there was racism out there and that people wanted him to fail. He was going to go back to his old ways. I drove him to his job the next morning and watched him go through the door. Today, that same man now has friends all over Chicago, attends company cookouts religiously, and has since been promoted. That is why I still believe in you, America.

I love you for your freedom. At times, freedom can be unbearably cruel. All the weight of being responsible and making sure your name is golden can sometimes be overwhelming. But when we move forward as individuals, when we dare to become somebodies instead of nobodies, it is then and only then that others come along beside us. We all know the harshness of freedom but we all know the rewards of moving forward and there is no better company than those who thrive in freedom.

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On the streets of Chicago and other cities, I have witnessed the worst of you. I have seen dead bodies in dystopian streets, the red and green lights alternating in the coldness of the night, and with no one coming to claim them. I have seen dead eyes in too many children who would think nothing of pulling the trigger. I have seen children who stare endlessly at soul-sucking screens. I have seen killers walk the streets without consequences. I have seen one too many dreams deferred and one too many hopes shatter. I have seen far too much for my soul to bear and, at times, I have thought of — no, dreamed of abandoning it all.

But through this darkness always comes a light, a miracle, a joy that lights up my heart. Over 18 years ago, a sweet baby girl was born smiling to a drug-addicted mother who was murdered a few months later. I held that baby in my arms and wondered why this child was born to a cruel fate. No one wanted her but a remote cousin and even she was questionable herself — in and out of jail, on an off drugs, and often homeless. But she took that baby into her life and they both grew up together. Now that baby is attending college and still smiling and her cousin lives out in the suburbs working for a corporation. I still believe in you, America.

I love you for the way you welcome second chances. You are the land where mistakes and tragedies can be stepping stones, where those knocked down are allowed to rise again. There is no greater freedom than this and what a gift you have given us.

I have traveled far and abroad and I always return home with gratitude in my heart for your eternal and timeless principles. They belong to mankind but no nation has enshrined them the way you have. The belief that all men are created equal is one that I evoke every day, like the time I told a young girl from an impoverished and broken home that her ability, inner strength, and talent were equal to any despite her ZIP code. 

What greater gift is there to people from all walks of life than you endowing them with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Sometimes I just sit with that phrase, “pursuit of happiness.” What a marvelous thing for you to make possible for those who yearn to make something of themselves. I still believe in you, America.

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Yet my love for you, America, is not blind. I see cracks in your foundation. I see communities overlooked instead of being invested in. I see politicians scheming for themselves instead of representing their constituencies. I see money taxed from hard-working people going into the wrong pockets. I see people embracing ideologies of division and tribalism. I hear talk of how we are on the verge of another civil war. And I admit I fear that too many of us have forgotten that we are, in fact, one people, one nation, under God.

American flag draped around a judge’s gavel block and the United States Constitution for use as a symbol of laws, freedom and separation of government powers. (iStock)

Then I remember the great reforms you have given us. You were the land where people from all over sought religious freedoms. Your men and women fought the bloodiest Civil War to end slavery and preserve the Union. Countless immigrants came through Ellis Island. Then came the Suffrage movement, the war that ended Nazism, and then the grand Civil Rights movement. If we are to remain the shining city on a hill, we must face today’s divisions and I believe we will because, deep down, we know a world without your principles is a dark one. I still believe in you, America, and with much hope.

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Most of all, America, I still believe in your dream. There are many who don’t and that is the belief of the privileged, those who never fought or suffered for their dreams. I was born a poor boy to a single mother in a small Tennessee town and I was raised in the Indiana countryside. Those who don’t believe in your dream told me I wouldn’t make it, that good old American racism would stop me, or that the system was so fixed that I shouldn’t bother trying. But your principles and the dreams that came with them kept me going. I told myself, I have to keep going, to see for myself if this American Dream is a lie or not. 

After much darkness and doubt, I made it and today I’m living my dream of inspiring countless kids on the South Side of Chicago to dream their own American Dreams. That is why I still believe in you, America, and always have. I love uou!

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