America the Beautiful

I love the fourth of July, it's just got a certain magic to it. It's in the summer, there's fireworks, and a bit of nostalgia always hits me. But this year a hefty amount of emotion hit me as well. We were enjoying the parade that morning with all of the million entries...and that barely feels like an overexaggeration (it's been a while since I've been to a parade =)) and then there were a couple old cars with World War II Veterans and one man that had survived Pearl Harbor, and I suddenly found myself tearing up.

It was just incredible to me, as I actually thought about it, what these men had done for their country - willingly. They fought for something huge, they fought for freedom. I felt grateful and humbled and awestruck all at the same time and I wanted to run out into the middle of the street and hug every one of them. I felt so full of patriotism for this wonderful country and in these crazy times with the war in Iraq and frustrations with the government, I wonder if we've lost too much of that.

Hearing those beautiful patriot songs this year put a lump in my throat, especially this second verse of the Star Spangled Banner:

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!


Wow, America really is quite beautiful.