JUDGEMENT

You pulled Judgement…
This card and song will have some significance for you.

Only In America is a protest song in the vein of Sweet Home Alabama and Born In The USA: at first blush, the chorus is a patriotic refrain, but the deeper message is one of revolution and conscious change, acknowledging the shadows of our past and the work that lies ahead. In turn, the Judgement card calls us to open our eyes and ears to our greater calling, serve a higher good, and transition into a new way of being. Fear is so often what holds us back: fear of sacrifice, fear of change, and fear to do what we are meant to do. In the center of the card, fiercely stands a judge, holding the American flag in one hand and a trumpet in the other, calling to the masses, who reach up to him, ready for eternal sentencing. How will we be judged? Did we earn our place on the right side of history? It’s safer and easier to do nothing, to hide from the call to our purpose, and pretend we didn’t hear. But the call will persist and grow louder until we reach an undeniable ending that forces a new beginning. So it has gone in American history: People of Color fighting for freedom, integration, civil rights, female, non-binary, LGBTQ people, marginalized people, differently abled people, immigrants, and people experiencing homelessness or poverty all fighting to be acknowledged as equally human and an essential part of the American fabric. These are the brave people who helped bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice by defying fear and taking action, risking and sometimes losing their lives to move us toward The Light. So when Judgement comes, which it does for us all, the questions will be “How did we show up in the world? Did we serve a higher good? Did we fight for what is right? Did we sacrifice for it?” And history will remember our answers. Our descendants will judge.

“Hallelujah for the ways we’ve grown, we still got a long way to go.”