Oh, Say Can You See What I Feel?

I've always wished I could sing.

If I could sing well, I would sing "The Star-spangled Banner" and try to show through my performance what it means to me.

I know that our national anthem is hard to sing--and even harder to understand, but that's partly because we only ever hear the first verse.

The first verse is a cliff-hanger.  It was never meant to be the entire song.  It only gives the exposition of the story, and it does that in a somewhat plodding way.  A man is hoping that his country's flag will still be waving at the end of a battle.

So, what?

I agree that isn't much to say in a national anthem.  That's why we need the rest of the verses.  And to find a meaning in it for ourselves.

The second verse describes his joyful discovery that the flag is still there in the morning, meaning that the war isn't lost and the new country still exists, with all its freedoms.

On the shore, dimly seen thru the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that, which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam.
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream;
'Tis the star-spangled banner!  Oh, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Beautiful poetry.  Difficult though the anthem may be, I love its lofty words and music.  If the national anthem were too simple, perhaps, lacking majesty, it would become boring in a different way.


The anthem is meaningful to me in a very personal way.  I know it must be for a lot of people.

Anyone who has fled their home to find other refuge--or been forced to engage in battle, legal or otherwise, to defend their home--or been forced to serve in any capacity of uncompensated servitude--would find the words of the last two verses speak to them in a very meaningful way.

It has been my privilege to work with people with amazing stories of surviving, escaping, and overcoming outrageous situations.

Our laws are not perfect, but our country has freedoms and liberties, programs and processes that at least attempt to ensure freedom and safety for everyone.  

America has helped the girl who watched her uncle slam a hatchet into her mother's head because her mother refused to let him take the girl away with him. 

It has helped the toddler whose mother's handprint was etched into his face by the force of her slap.

It has helped the psychologically caged woman who wrote the name of her abuser in tiny script on her legs, just in case her body was ever left by him out in the woods.


It has helped the fourteen-year-old widow nursing her third child from an arranged marriage.


It has helped people who walked hundreds of miles to the border of the next country--and their next meal.


It has helped people who spent their whole lives in refugee camps--people so unexposed to our common luxuries that a toilet looks like a porcelain fountain for washing one's face or drinking out of, and a Lysol wipe looks like something good for cleaning your teeth. 

Those whose hearts have sunk fighting--and losing--battle after battle while searching for the courage to flee, to quit, to try a new path--whose hearts have risen again in the hope to triumph, would understand and feel, as I do, the words:

And where is that band, that so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and country shall leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Those who know what it feels like to not be free, and what it feels like to have to be brave--who have offered prayers in increasing fear and dwindling hope, holding out for some miracle they cannot envision, would, I think, stand and sing with me, our hearts soaring in the air along with the triumphant words and high notes:

Oh, thus be it ever when free men shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust!"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Because, to listen to me sing the national anthem could be a disappointment.

I can't sing.

But I can write.

And I will, in my own way, forever celebrate and defend this song as our national anthem.