la liberté éclairant le monde

back before this country's centennial some folks, including a man named bartholdi, started thinking about and then working on a statue that would be the embodiment of a beautiful democracy, the embodiment of a nation that had survived internal strife and had struck valiant blows against oppression. because building a giant woman (france's part in the celebration) and building a pedestal for her to stand on (the united states' offering) are both pretty expensive endeavors, the statue wasn't finished until 1884 and the pedestal took another two years. when the country was trying to make money to build the pedestal they held all sorts of auctions and contests and a woman named emma put her poem in one. someone read it aloud and i am sure that everyone clapped, but after that folks forgot until well after emma died. a friend badgered those she could about the poem and finally in 1903 emma's words were pressed into a bronze plaque and hung up inside the pedestal. emma's words became the woman's voice.

The New Colossus
Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

i round the corner of the fairway store and snap a few photos before i realize the statue of liberty is in them. she sneaks up on me with all that coppery quietness. now, i am not what most folks think of when they think patriot because i am not always yelling about my country like it is a football team, like it will kick your ass, but that woman standing there so patiently for so long is hard to look at unless you think about why she's there. the statue, meant for a different purpose when it was shipped over from france, became for us the woman in emma's poem, became the very symbol of why we are all here and how. she is the promise of safe haven, of a new life. she is the voice insisting that the least of us is welcome here. always. i cannot see her without hearing the poem in my head, thinking about her turning her back on all that is rich and elegant, turning her back on fanciness. "give me..." she says and who are you to deny a woman who carries lightning in her hand? a woman with broken chains strewn around her feet? "send these...to me." she means this. and i would not want to be the person to get in her way.

she asks for the poor. she asks for the homeless. she asks for people others see as garbage. as garbage. she demands them, says she's waiting right here with the light on, here in my town outside the grocery store.

this is the gift she offers the world. it is the gift we offer the world not because we are better or more powerful but because it is how we began and how we will be able to continue as a democracy, as a nation. this is what a gift is, an unexpected opportunity. liberty enlightening the world.