Several years ago we added to the frenzy with our Jackson Hole Kids’ Games after the parade on our Green. This year the day is a Sunday, and we’ve made all the preparations for the festival to be a grand day!

As a child, I don’t recall nearly the celebration. There were fireworks of course. Instead of civic displays it was mostly individuals who shot them off, including the year I did not realize that the M80 was still lit and it exploded only a few inches from my right ear. We had neighborhood picnics, but I never experienced the day in full tilt until we moved here seven years ago.

Although almost all of the founders of our nation were proper Anglicans, independence was not particularly a blessing for the Church. Establishment gradually ended and most of the clergy and not a few of the parishioners greeted the founding of our nation by becoming Canadian subjects. Yet, as early as the 1785 first American Book of Common Prayer, July 4 was reckoned a “Red Letter Day” - a Holy Day in more common terminology. We were the first group to do that, perhaps in a vain attempt to atone for Cornwallis’ army.

Despite what Glen Beck might say, definitions of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" change with the generations. In our own day, some long for the “nanny state” while others believe that government should always be treated with suspicion.

My own sense is that phrase should always be seen as aspirational. In our current prayerbook, The Thanksgiving for our Nation includes, “Help us, O Lord, to finish the good work here begun. Strengthen our efforts to blot out ignorance and prejudice, and to abolish poverty and crime. And hasten the day when all our people, with many voices in one united chorus, will glorify your holy Name.”

Thanksgiving for what we have been given stewardship over; recognition that we too are called to be founders of a “more perfect union.” I can celebrate that!