In recent days, Trump has suggested that people who desecrate the United States flag should be stripped of their U.S. citizenship. Of course, as in many areas of government, he is ignorant of the Supreme Court ruling that states that the Constitution protects such an action under the 1st amendment’s freedom of speech. As always, the rancor that has arisen over the issue is great. I am sure that it was not the intent of the government that the United States flag be used as a bikini top enhancing the bosom of some buxom young woman, and yet, one sees the flag displayed in this way, often on female models at car racing events and on beaches down South. Somehow a scantily clad woman in a Stars and Stripes bikini doesn’t offend people. The bottom line is that a flag is a symbol.
A symbol points to a reality or a deeper truth that lies beyond them. Hence, with a religious Icon, it is not the painting of the Christ that one stops to admire. Most Icons are very two dimensional and for the most part as art are not the most attractive in terms of composition and color. The purpose of the Icon is NOT the painting. The Icon is to draw the person looking at it to the deeper truth, the deeper reality of God’s mystery that lay beyond it. In Catholic liturgy we use many symbols within the liturgical space (altar, ambo, gospel book, vestments, and painted images throughout the church), but we differentiate the symbols from the Signs, e.g. the Word of God spoken, the consecrated bread and wine that is the Body and Blood of Christ. A Sign becomes the end itself, hence we reverence the Word spoken from scripture as that of God’s, and the bread and wine consecrated as the Body and Blood of Jesus.
Flags in whatever configuration or color they may be are just symbols of the reality that lay behind them. The United States flag points to the deeper reality of the Constitution, as the author of the Meme is trying to point out. If someone in battle dies for the flag and not for the Constitution of the United States it is suppose to symbolize, then their perspective of what the United States is and what the Founding Fathers meant the United States to be is askew. I do not advocate destroying a flag just as I do not advocate the destroying of a religious Icon or symbol. However, the mere destruction of the symbol does not destroy the reality or the mystery that symbol is meant to represent. While I will honor our war dead on Memorial Day, our Independence on July 4th, and our laborers on Labor Day by flying the United States flag, I generally fly the Earth Flag outside my home most other days of the year.
The Earth Flag, designed by John McConnell, is actually a picture of Earth taken by NASA and placed upon deep dark blue field. This flag, meant by its creator, is to be a symbol of protecting Earth’s environment. For me, it is a symbol of a deeper mystery of who the humanity and all creation truly are, universally created by God. The curse of the Tower of Babel has inflicted upon our Earth the notion that only a particular culture, a particular language, a particular way of life is the ONLY one that is important. It has been the cause of war, and of genocide. For me the Earth Flag is a symbol of whom we must become in order to fully be that which God intended us to be. We need to see one another equally as children of God, regardless of our national origin, the color of our skin, the religion we practice of lack thereof, and the language we may speak. We need to evolve in becoming, for lack of a better term, Universalists.
We have encountered Universalists in our lifetime. Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, the Dhali Llama, Mahatma Ghandi, Mary Jo Copland, Pope Francis 1, Cathy Heying, my own wife, Ruth, are people I consider Universalists. They transcend their own country of origin, their own language, their own religion and see all people equally as one. Ruth works with a multi-national, multi-cultural staff as a nurse at the State Veterans Home in South Minneapolis. As one of the Ethiopians on staff pointed out to her, “you are color blind.” He went on to explain that Ruth sees and treats all people equally with respect and dignity. Ruth is a Universalist. I believe that all of my children are fully on the way of becoming Universalists. If only all of humanity would aspire to become the same, then symbols like national flags would be obsolete and the curse of war and genocide that has gutted humanity for ages would finally cease.
