Morning has Broken in America

It feels like Spring in America. It may be bone-chilling and snowing outside your door. Your driveway may be covered by a sheet of ice. And yet, I am overwhelmed by the feeling that Spring has arrived. The jonquils and tulips are pushing up with all their strength, causing cracks to spread through the icy layer like a spider’s web. I imagine that if I were to watch the frosty garden that I might witness the moment that the buds burst through and reveal themselves. I envision a miraculously spontaneous change of season. The gray skies turn blue and the leafless limbs turn green with new foliage just as the morning breaks. Yet nothing that I am conjuring in my mind need happen for Spring to arrive in America today. 

 “Morning has broken, like the first morning.” These words from a hymn first published in 1931, are most familiar to us from the beautiful arrangement by Cat Stevens. The hymn is a prayer of thankfulness for each ordinary day that recreates itself over and over for us. But it is also a song about redemption. A reminder that God gives us an endless supply of new opportunities to re-create ourselves by letting go of yesterday and claiming today. We can choose to open our eyes this morning as if everything that we see and hear and taste and smell in brand new to us. So, on this morning, as we let go of four years of yesterdays, we must claim our collective shot at redemption. We can be a new America that chooses love, compassion, and unity over jealousy, greed, and hate. 

It feels like Spring to me because Spring is the season of redemptive opportunity. This is a spiritual theme that is an integral part of many religious faiths. From ancient pagan practices to Judaism to Christianity, Spring is the time to begin again. America must redeem itself. Redemption has requirements. We must acknowledge our faults, actively work to heal those that we have hurt, and reconcile our spiritual accounts. We must live up to our ideals with honesty and integrity if we want the reward of a new season of hope and liberty. 

Each Spring, Jews are freed from the bondage of Pharaoh’s slavery as celebrated at Passover. Each Easter, Christians are born again and freed from the bondage of the tomb. Buddhists believe that we can have a new Spring in each moment by practicing seeing the world as if you are a newborn baby. They call this “seeing with new eyes.” It is time for our Country to see with new eyes. It is time to let go of the bondage of hate and white supremacy. Our country must be born again, while acknowledging the sins of our past, but recognizing the beauty of the idealistic words of our founding documents. Then we must make reparations. Reparations are essential to reconciliation. And without reconciliation, we can not enjoy the new life that abounds in Spring. 

 “Morning has broken like the first morning 

Blackbird has spoken like the first bird 

Praise for the singing, praise for the morning 

Praise for them springing fresh from the world”