Beside the Golden Door

A few years back, I had the privilege of attending a professional development conference in New York City. That’s what I told people anyway. And it was true. But like so many things, the words don’t quite do it justice. Because what I really had was the privilege of being there—in that glimmering, chaotic, magnificent cathedral of humanity called Manhattan—with Angie, her parents, and all the ghosts of those who had come before us.

We played tourists with reverence. Took in Broadway’s spectacle—Wicked and The Lion King, where flying monkeys and stampeding wildebeests felt more real than most of what the news has to offer. We wandered Times Square like children let loose in the grown-up world, in and out of our hotel like we belonged, even though the nightly rate whispered otherwise. It was the sort of trip that seems more like memory's attempt at a dream than anything that actually happened.

We arrived a day early and boarded a ferry toward Liberty Island. I remember the wind, sharp and honest, cutting through us as we neared her. Lady Liberty. Taller than she should have been, smaller than I expected—like most people I admire. She didn’t move or speak, but somehow she welcomed. Not with balloons or fanfare, but with a stillness that settled into the chest like a benediction.

We read the words carved into her base. Everyone does.“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

Words so beautiful they ache.Words so full of hope and hunger and contradiction.Words that sting, because we don't live them anymore. Or maybe we never did.

We call them "wretched refuse" now, with new language and smoother diction. We roll our eyes at the tired, the poor, the tempest-tossed, as if our grandparents were any different. As if our own souls aren’t still tossed from time to time.

The ferry took us next to Ellis Island, that strange in-between place where the past breathes just beneath the floorboards. We stood shoulder to shoulder with strangers in the same great hall where once people waited for the answer to a single question: Will they let me in?

I remember walking up those worn stairs, polished smooth by the prayers of thousands. I remember touching the handrails with something like reverence. In that great room, empty now but echoing still, I sat on a bench and wondered which of my ancestors once stood where I stood—wide-eyed, heartsick, clinging to a name scrawled on a manifest and a hope too big for their hands.

And it hit me there—that it wasn’t just their story. It was mine. Ours. Because aren’t we all still waiting for something better? A new world. A new mercy. A land where we can breathe again, deeply, without fear. Maybe it's not America we’re after anymore. Maybe it's something older and deeper and more eternal.

We are still the huddled masses, even if we dress it up in education and mortgages and PTO meetings. We are still the ones who yearn. Still the ones who wander and wonder if the door will open.

The truth is, we never left Ellis Island. Not really.

We are still standing beside the golden door.

Still tired.

Still poor in all the ways that matter.

Still hoping someone will lift the torch.

And maybe, just maybe, the promise wasn’t carved in copper but in hearts that still believe such a door exists.