Who Will Relight Lady Liberty’s Lamp? The Middle Way Forward
Later this month, I’ll leave my home in Florida and travel to New York City to board Virgin Voyages’ Brilliant Lady. As she sets sail past the Statue of Liberty, I’ll be carrying with me more than luggage. I’ll be carrying years of reflection on liberty, oppression, and what it means to welcome the tired, the poor, and the tempest-tost in our time.
I first wrote about Lady Liberty in 2021, when the world was still reeling from pandemic disarray. Even then, I sensed that her light was dimming. In 2025, as I prepare to sail past her, the questions feel sharper still: Have we forgotten the invitation etched on her pedestal? Do we still lift a lamp beside the golden door?
Liberty’s Promise and Its Wounds
The Statue of Liberty — “Liberty Enlightening the World” — was a gift of friendship from France, dedicated in 1886. She carries broken chains at her feet, symbolizing freedom from tyranny. She holds a tablet marked July 4, 1776, and raises a torch to light the way. But that torch has been closed to the public since the Black Tom explosion of 1916, when an act of sabotage left it damaged beyond repair.
For more than a century, her flame has been symbolic but not whole. We have, quite literally, a lighting problem on the path to liberty.
Emma Lazarus’s poem, engraved on her pedestal in 1903, declared her the “Mother of Exiles” and offered these words: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Those lines once defined the American spirit. Today, they are often dismissed, ignored, or contradicted outright.
The Weight of Oppression
Oppression comes in many forms. It can be a government that overreaches, a workplace that silences voices, a church that controls rather than uplifts, or even the internal critic that keeps us bound. In every age, tyrannies arise — sometimes political, sometimes personal.
In 2025, we see oppression in our immigration policies, where too many fleeing violence and poverty are turned away or demonized. We see it in our fractured diplomacy, where ego-driven leadership pushes away allies and leaves America less trusted on the world stage. And we see it in our own neighborhoods, where homelessness — physical, mental, and spiritual — is rising and too often invisible.
Some are homeless in body, lacking food and shelter. Others are homeless in spirit, cut adrift by a culture that measures worth by wealth and power. In truth, many of us are oppressed in ways we rarely name, because oppression isn’t always physical chains — it’s also the heaviness that weighs on the mind and heart.
Florida, New York, and the American Mirror
My journey north this September is more than a vacation. Traveling from Florida to New York ties me into the story of millions of Americans who move between these two states, searching for opportunity, affordability, or a new chapter. Florida and New York reflect the best and worst of our national character: diverse, dynamic, but divided over what liberty truly means.
When I board the Brilliant Lady, I’ll be thinking of the many who made journeys before me — immigrants who sailed into New York Harbor with nothing but hope, and families who moved south seeking light in another form. These journeys are bound by the same question: will America honor its promise of liberty?
Relighting the Lamp
The Brilliant Lady is more than a ship name. To me, it feels like a prophecy — a reminder that the light we need may not come from institutions or egos, but from people grounded in values, humility, and service. In a time when ego-driven leadership has darkened America’s welcome, we are called to rekindle a different kind of flame: one of compassion, courage, and truth.
Lady Liberty was never meant to be a statue alone. She was meant to be a guidepost. If her lamp is dim, it is not because freedom has failed, but because we have forgotten how to tend it.
The Middle Way Forward
The Middle Way Movement is not about choosing sides — right or left, red or blue. It is about choosing balance, wisdom, and service in a time when extremes have left us divided and weary. The Middle Way calls us to a higher form of leadership: one rooted in emotional intelligence, compassion, and truth.
It is not soft, and it is not about entitlement. It is about responsibility — leaders serving people with no hidden agenda, citizens remembering that liberty requires both courage and care.
To relight Lady Liberty’s lamp, we must return to this Middle Way. Only then can America’s flame shine bright again, not as an illusion of strength, but as a beacon of love, balance, and freedom for all.
A Call Forward
As the Brilliant Lady sails past Lady Liberty, I will carry this hope: that America can rediscover what liberty means. That we can welcome the tired, the poor, and the tempest-tost — not only in body, but in spirit. That liberty is not arrogance, conquest, or exclusion, but a humble light carried for one another.
The world is watching whether we still lift that lamp beside the golden door. And in truth, so are we.