Happy birthday, Lady Liberty. I read this morning that on this day in 1886 the Statue of Liberty was officially unveiled and opened to the public. France had been the birth mother, shipping the statue in 214 crates to be assembled in New York. Thinking about the generosity through contemporary eyes, I’m astounded by the gift. Today it’s hard to imagine one country doing anything like this for another, but as the 19th century ebbed to a close the French apparently felt an extravagant appreciation for — maybe amazement at — the love of freedom they felt we held in common. According to my source, dedication day was inclement, but crowds ignored the chill and the rain and jammed the space. Responding to mixed signals, the sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, who was alone in the statue's crown, dropped the veil prematurely, interrupting the festivities. No one seemed to mind. It had been the statue that had drawn the crowds, not the prospect of tedious speeches.
In the years leading up to this historic birth, the project’s pregnancy was not without difficulty. Fundraising stalled, delaying the completion of the pedestal on which the statue would be installed. In 1883 poet Emma Lazarus wrote and contributed a sonnet to an auction held to raise money for the lagging project. Eventually, in 1903, the poem was cast onto a bronze plaque and attached to the statue’s base.
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-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
I think of it as something of a baptismal name.
A post-natal consecration.
A lens, amplifying it’s intrinsic identity.
And there she stood, symbolic flame alight, her invitational lyrics sung out.
“Stood.” It’s a vacant pedestal these days. We don’t much care for immigrants these days, erecting barriers literal, procedural and relational to bar them entrance. Only the uninformed or the politically blind complain about our “porous” borders. It takes years to navigate the system — often decades. And money. Unless, of course, you are well-connected, in which case you can cut to the front of the line. Unless, of course, you are willing to perform a job that no one else wants to do — like cut meat in a meat packing plant, or harvest fruits or vegetables in a scorching hot field — in which case we will turn our head and ignore your presence until that is no longer convenient. Meanwhile, if you are caught we will cage your children like dogs and send you elsewhere. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
There is, in the news of recent days, a caravan of refugees — thousands — walking north from Central America toward our southern border. They aren’t, and won’t be, welcomed here. I have every expectation that their arrival will be met with resistant, repelling force, if not brutality. We will collectively, and with a mixture of righteousness and helplessness, assert that we had no other choice. We have our laws and a border to defend. And we have all these precious jobs to protect…that nobody actually wants.
And believe me, I do not know the alternative. There has to be, I acknowledge, some kind of a screening process. But I have never sensed that the Ellis Island gates through which most of our ancestors passed erected quite such labyrinthian obstacles, and somehow we all managed.
I don’t suppose I really blame the politicians. They, too, have their job to do; their laws to enforce. What puzzles me are the good and conscientious church folk who read their Bibles as faithfully as I. Unlike the varieties of modern topics about which we volubly argue on which scripture only vaguely or ambiguously speaks — and often then only by extension and extrapolation — on the subject of immigrant welcome, the expectations are repetitively clear. Old or New Testament, it doesn’t matter: “hospitality” is to be our name.
“Don’t exploit or mistreat the refugee,” commands the prophet Jeremiah. “Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers,” notes the book of Hebrews, “for some who have done this have entertained angels without knowing it.”
These two among dozens of others.
And so it may well be that as happens on many other issues, our patriotic interests conflict with our Christian obligations. Sadly, we can seldom tell them apart.
And so it is that on this day, 132 years ago, that the Statue of Liberty was born. October 28. It’s less clear to me if there is an equally specific date on which she died. It just doesn’t take much of a look around to confirm that she has. Lazarus' sweeping invitation has been replaced by our stern warning:
“Don’t even think of bringing us any tired or poor. Keep your wretched refuse on your own teeming shore. We won’t have them. These golden doors are dark. And closed.”
May she never Rest In Peace.
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