The Best of Small Town America: What a July 4th Parade Taught Me About Real Liberty
Hello, Praying Friend!
I don’t usually find myself tearing up at a July 4th parade. But I did this year.
For twenty-five years, hit-and-miss, we’ve managed to see the Fourth of July parade here in Mount Dora, Florida. If I had to guess, I’d say we’ve caught about half of them. Most of those years with kids in tow — first it was two, then three, then four. Hot, sweaty, and excited, all rolled into one. As time passes, the way it always does, it was back to three kids. Then two. Then one. This year, it was just me. And Lucy the dog.
Same route down Donnelly Street. Same spot on the curb, or close enough to it, for twenty-five years. Southern Living just named it one of the ten best small-town Fourth of July parades in the South, which is the kind of thing that makes you look around at your own neighbors like, oh, I guess we really do have something here. And the same cast of characters that makes a small-town parade what it is: the Sheriff and his Auxiliary. The motorcycle club, louder than they need to be. Vietnam veterans, walking a little slower each year, saluted a little longer each year.
Lucy the dog picking out treats at the dog bakery in town
The Lions Club. Lawn bowling (yes, that’s a thing here). The Historical Society, reminding everybody this town has always been this town. Local businesses on flatbed trailers. Chick-fil-A. Boat tours. Kiwanis. Little League, in uniforms two sizes too big. Cheerleaders and football players. Beauty queens waving from convertibles. Politicians waving harder. The 4-H club with miniature ponies who could not care less about any of it — with parents keeping half an eye on their kids so nobody gets trampled getting too close. A giant inflatable foaming beer, because of course there is. A dance school, mid-routine.
General George himself walked the route!
And candy, everywhere. Fistfuls of it, thrown from every float and flatbed, and kids diving after it like it’s the only thing that matters — which, for about eight seconds, it is.
Nobody’s directing any of this, not really. There’s no official keeping the police cruiser off the ponies’ heels. It’s just everybody knowing, without being told twice, where they fall in line and where the crowd stands and where the kids can chase candy without getting run over.
A dad standing alone with his dog gets caught off guard by how much he loves this ordinary place.
Edmund Burke, writing about liberty two hundred years before any of us stood on Donnelly Street, put it plainer than I ever could: “The only liberty I mean is a liberty connected with order; and that not only exists with order and virtue, but cannot exist at all without them.” Standing there watching twenty-five years’ worth of the same parade go by the same way, I felt the truth of that in my bones before I ever had words for it. Liberty was never about erasing the order. It’s what happens because there is one.
Which explains something from ancient scripture that many of us have, perhaps, read a hundred times without really grasping it.
LIFE — “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)
LIBERTY — “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” And: “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)
HAPPINESS — “If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love … I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” (John 15:10–11)
This month, this year, and each moment of our lives, may we pursue His grace and Life — standing on the curb He’s given us, and finding it’s exactly wide enough for everything that matters.
Sharing Wonder,
