UNION

In productive dirt, in particularly productive dirt, a bamboo root will shoot… Will shoot forth sprouts generation after generation… Ever denser, ever farther out, ever thicker, a forest… A forest like the forest of the grand Redwood Tree whose root for a millennium mothers… Mothers shoots which will tower as lords here on earth for centuries.

So too, I am a child of a root of a soil which sprouts generation after generation. I have risen in this New World, but I too sprout from the hoary trunk of the Germanic. For two hundred years my family’s tree has fed in the soil of America… Has fed from the minerals of American dirt… Dirt from which my blood has built these American bones. And on these bones my veins surge with the vigor of American strength… My nerves have flowered an American keenness, my eyes an American vision… My emotions fed with an American virtue.

My flesh is as much a Wampanoag Massasoit man’s as that of the Flemish potter who disembarked in New Amsterdam in 1700. From the burghers of the village of New Amsterdam to this California bare-footed spirit-dancer, the mothering root has spread and spawned.

O all my relatives… O within in me are the ancestors… are New York corporate lawyers, are cold capitalists bankers, are pillars of the community, are good ole boys, drunks, fops, is a black slave freed, are politicians, intellectuals, homosexuals. Rooted here is this concoction of DNA, I am but this season’s nuanced shoot.

I salute America. I am enamored. My body is its ground. My soul’s flame is fueled by its untouched wild spaces. My passion is shaped by its frontier enthusiasm.

I salute the grass-loving ranching family, the organic dirt-loving truck-farmer, the humblest-of-the-humble crop-nurturing, ever-laboring, farm-worker family, these who diligently feed us all so very well.

And I salute the thriving wild- the deer, the red-tail, the raccoon, the coyote, the turkey, the wolf, the bear… these who sneak in at night, sneak in to scavenge of what I have, of what is left of the dog’s meal, of human abundance.

I salute the Sierra’s towering Doug Fir. I know the hot strength of the sun’s shine. I know the kiss of dripping rain. I am the Fir’s thirst and I am its outspreading satisfaction as it thrives in this Western soil, as it continues its climb into the sky.

As I stand amidst… about me all are a celebration, are a kinship. O all my relatives. I celebrate the kinship knit upon this soil.

And here today, in the grandest of kinship, I celebrate that this shoot has grown to become a citizen of the World-As-One. I have come to embrace the global union. I have come to embrace humanity as one person made over and over (each is ready to smile with me when I smile). I have come to occupy the one human comprehension... occupy the one culture that holds the many cultures. I have come capable and have inherited technology’s command. I have come primed to finally know the full final fulfillment. And I have succeeded, I have transcended the confines of time and space… I am no longer caught in the tangle of differences.

I am American, Caucasian… I include the proud Central Asian Turk, the cultured Persian, the South Asian shave-headed Buddhist boy, the tenacious Han rice-patty farmer, the reindeer herding Samit, the totem wielding Australian Aboriginal.

In me is an Amazon Shaman, in me is a Kalahari Pygmy, motionless on one foot, sling ready, my focus unbroken on a male jack rabbit. I sit on the naked earth of a sweat lodge and drum and sing with the Inuit, sing to the seal, to the ocean, to the sky and to its god of wind for the continuance of life.

And I sit here appreciating how Microsoft has made composing these lines so easy.

O, O my fellow citizens… I celebrate this American flesh. I celebrate the vigor in our gut of our American bacterium. I celebrate the vigor of my mitochondria as I jam on, jam on nourished by this American fecundity.

I salute you, my fellow pilgrims, we who ride along with Raven upon this Turtle Island. The Promise of the New World is achieved, I share in the unity, I share as a citizen of Gaia.

Yes, I am of the Connected World; I am Gaian. I breathe with the source of all, and my vision is nuanced with the whole of history… I embrace life…clear, content, and encompassing.

O All my Relatives.