“And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’  Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.” (Acts 16:19)

Macedonia is a Greek word, which means elevation. It is a country north of Greece where Paul, whose letters form a substantial part of the New Testament, preached. Metaphysically, Macedonia represents the desire to change, to turn one’s thoughts to higher consciousness, to awaken with more constructive and productive energy, to move from division to unity, from fear to love, from resistance to peace.

Come to Macedonia, to the willingness that we have, to help us to cultivate new consciousness, to stop being passive and accept bad behavior, to not be content with the battle only half won.

The battle is against a disease that has claimed so many lives, against an ignorance that refuses to concede the truth of a new administration, against racism that racializes black and brown bodies as “other,” against the caging of our children, against the cowardice of hiding behind bullying.

Come to Macedonia and battle the ugliness within to embrace a cultural shift of wholeness that will cure us, hold us safer, give us the comfort and peace that we need.

As we celebrate our veterans, we realize that we must all take up the mantle for a fight within our own borders, a fight for liberty and justice as we run out of places to bury our bodies.

When honoring Veterans Day in 2016, President Barack Obama said the “American instinct has never been to find isolation in opposite corners.  It is to find strength in our common creed, to forge unity from our great diversity, to sustain that strength and unity even when it is hard. . . . to reconnect with one another and with the principles that are more enduring than transitory politics.”