We’re having a party. Actually, I’m reluctant to call it a party ‘cuz that implies that I will actually be hosting something, when really I’m just sitting around drinking beer. The thing is, we live three blocks from the biggest fireworks show in the city. If we ever decide not to have a party we’ll have to board up all the windows and leave town. Even then people would probably show up just to sit on the lawn and see the view. Right now I can see a huge barge sitting out in Lake Union, stuffed full of top-shelf pyrotechnics. In typical American over-the-topness there’s also a giant inflatable Statue of Liberty head; a dozen booths offering kid’s crafts and freebie Washington Mutual logo key chains; and four walls of speakers hanging down from cranes originally designed to build skyscrapers. Right now we are being bathed in the dulcet tones of America the Beautiful, soon to be followed by the traditional Jimi Hendrix rendition of the National Anthem.

I just cannot get into it.

This weekend I read March, by Geraldine Brooks. It’s a Pulitzer Prize winning novel about Mr. March, father of the iconic Little Womenof Louise May Alcott fame. Brook’s fictionalized tale follows Mr. March through a term of service as a military chaplain in the first year of the Civil War. Both Mr. and Mrs. March are staunch abolitionists– their fortune has been given away for the cause and their small home serves as a way station on the Underground Railroad. During the course of the novel the voice of the narrator changes between Mr. and Mrs., and both speak amorously of their country – the newness of it and the still unfolding possibilities held within.

I know, objectively, that there is much here to be grateful for. We still have freedoms other nations only dream of. We live a life of unheard of privilege. Our country and her citizens do, at times, keep the peace, serve other nations, and extend help beyond our shores. But in my heart, these goodnesses recede. The picture that arises of my birthplace is much darker, grimmer. I see us as a powerful head-of-family, sometimes benevolent, sometimes violent. We are a people who elect leaders who in turn use power– not to keep peace, not to aid and benefit– but to cause war. It can be honestly said of our national tribe that we are a warlike people.

I don’t know how to celebrate this; I don’t know how to say “Hurrah!” when so much of our whole consists of war craft and killing, manipulation and assumed ownership. These terrible habits are deeply embedded in our cultural be-ing. I was reminded of the complexity of bitterness of it all when I went to Boom City this year to buy fireworks on the Tulalip Reservation. We shopped through row after row of temporary booths, bartering for the best prices, picking up dozens of sparklers, mortar rounds with colorful sparks, tiny bees that spun out magenta lights. As I paid for our bounty, I said to the booth owner, “Happy 4th of July!” Then I paused, dumbstruck by the irony of what I was doing and saying. I felt like I was holding beads in my hands, offering a trade. How dare I utter that to someone whose land we took, whose family we slew? What was I doing, purchasing at a pittance the miniature bombs and explosions that echoed those which stole the land I now live on? It’s all so interwoven and so deeply dysfunctional. The violence runs so deep.

How do I celebrate this, on this Independence Day?

If only this day could be a day to seek peace, to protest violence. If only our parades featured the Mennonite Central Committee, Peace Corps volunteers, Cindy Sheehan. If only we could buy colorful party plates that featured peace signs on the front and websites of peace keeping organizations on the back. (They’d be made post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable based inks, of course.) If only we flew as many peace-sign flags as American flags–and had the action behind the symbol to give that new banner real meaning). If only we could celebrate that the poor were freed from need; that black youth were freed from being overly recruited to the lowest ranking military positions; that genocide was being staved.

In my children’s memories, there has never been a time without war. We teach them peace keeping – in their own small relational lives, and in regards to the political situation at hand. They grasp it, as I do, in incomplete ways. They think the war is about oil…and cupcakes. (We can’t figure out where that came from.) They wish Bush was not in power. Paul says, “The man is evil.” Eden replies, “He’s not evil Daddy! He’s just man that makes very bad choices!” Her child-wisdom pulls us away from a radical bend in the road, turns us back to a more centered place. We begin again to look towards peace, to pray for peace, to hope for peace.

People are arriving at my door now, eating nacho chips and drinking Mike’s Hard Lemonade. We will chat, and read magazines, and grill things on the fire. And, in the smallest of ways, as we hang our prayer flags, we will seek peace.