Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow: Meeting the Challenge of Our Multicultural America & Beyond The Americans In Celebration of America, (1989), and Prayer for a Nation, (1991) (from pages 50-53)

While we try to integrate our personal need for roots with our lives in the world around us, sometimes we're successful; sometimes we're not.

In 1989, Michelle Young's In Celebration of America first appeared in a newspaper. On February 6, 1991, she presented the "America the Beautiful" portion added to the end of a prayer she wrote at the request of the Phoenix Board of Rabbis for a reading to in audience of 500 people. The prayer has since appeared in publications across the nation. She has never accepted remuneration for either piece. Here, the prayer appears at the end of:

Morning breaks the black blanket of night around five a.m. on July 4 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

A wide expanse of the plains allows you to savor its beauty bathed in the rising sun's reflection. Magical in [their] effect, those early morning hours raise the curtain [on] a stage set for planned festivities.

Here, on one of the nation's most densely populated Indian reservations, the Oglala Sioux mark Independence Day with powwows of ceremonial dancing, great food, fireworks, and traditional beaded buckskins.

Yet the reservation holds historical and painful memories of Wounded Knee where over 200 Indians were massacred in 1890, and of that village's seizure in 1973 by the same number of Sioux, a protest that resulted in over 300 arrests and the deaths of two FBI agents.

As much as we might not care to admit it, all historical moments create great nations in the some way as they do great families. The vivid traditions and culture of our original native Americans strengthen the Great Indian Nation and the Union itself with a richer heritage.

But this great nation thrives on much more than the uniting of settlers and native Americans.

Today America, the melting pot, blooms with tradition and culture from every corner of the world.

Our Lady of Liberty in New York Harbor continues to provide a ray of hope for refuge to all who are oppressed and persecuted.

Still, there are those in this nation who, like past exploiters of liberty, feel threatened by differences in people. Terrified [by] an unknown future world where all might live in harmony, these are the insecure exploiters of the nation who fear-just as small children fear nighttime and dark rooms, In their organization into parasitic groups like the KKK and skinheads, these individual cowards feed on each other's insecurities and, like a cancer, attempt to pervade the body of the nation.

They don't seem to understand that true superiority is born out of humility and love.

We've survived other cancers: the semi-slavery and slavery of indentured service, the sweat shops, McCarthyism in the 50s. The cancer of prejudice, too, can be beat.

Our great nation, replete with heritage, is an exquisite tapestry woven with threads of red, ebony, brown, cream, and ivory.

This is America.

Remove one thread, and the beauty is destroyed, the tapestry becomes worthless. Use the same color and the same texture throughout, and the tapestry-again-is worthless.

We celebrate another double birthday this year [1989] in this, the 200th anniversary of the first Presidential inauguration.

As we marvel at fireworks exploding in the night skies, say a prayer for those who can't celebrate with us this year-the Russian Jews still trapped in a nation that neither wants nor is willing to relinquish them, the students in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, and all others who long for the freedom we live.

And while you say that prayer, add a special thanks that you are an American.

My name is Maria, Suzette, Natasha, Lien, Michiko Miguel, Pierre, Mikhail, Ly, Shinya...

Oh beautiful for spacious skies

I am brown, white, black, yellow, red or a mixture of some or all of them

for amber waves of grain

I'm Christian or Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, or one of the many other religions in the world

for purple mountains' majesties

I live in Phoenix or New York, Atlanta or Seattle, Kansas City or Honolulu

above the fruited plain

I speak Spanish, French, Russian, Vietnamese, Japanese, English

America.

I'm a doctor, a janitor, a teacher, a factory worker, a housekeeper, a computer engineer. if I don't work, I go to school

America.

If I don't work, someone refuses to hire me because of the color of my skin, the slant of my eyes, my accent, or my still unrefined use of the English language.

God shed His grace on thee

I serve in the United States Armed Forces

And crown thy good

I pay taxes

With brotherhood

I am an American

From sea to shining sea.

Lord, You have created a world for us, surely with the intention that we could live together in peace and in harmony, a world of babbling brooks and rolling hills, fertile and lush green land, and miles of sand dunes punctuated with a palm or two. But we are mortal and like children in the face of greed, fear, and insecurity. We don't learn well from past mistakes, and again we need Your help.

Help us, Lord, to remember harmony and to return to peaceful times. Guide us in uniting with our world neighbors against more important wars to save our planet, guarding against famine, water and air pollution, the loss of forests through abuse or fire. Protect us from our shortcomings, especially now in this critical time of war.

Forgive us for the foolish mistakes everyone involved has made that brought all of us to this state of war. Extend Your blessings [over] our world for peace and tolerance among all peoples of the world. And please, Lord, bring all now fighting in the Mideast back to their countries, back home-safely and alive. Amen.

This book is available through several bookstores online, including Amazon.com as well as through the publisher Caddo Gap Press.