The United States is a Cancer country born on the 4th of July in 1776. We will soon celebrate our 249th year birthday. What shall we celebrate? What is the best of us?

At the U.S. birth on July 4th, 1776, we declared our independence, our creed to the world – a creed of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The country birthed that momentous July was blessed with an unusual wealth visible in the U.S. birth chart as grouping of planets in Cancer, a stellium (3 or more planets in the same sign). Venus, Jupiter, Sun and Mercury gathered in Cancer that July creating a powerful emphasis on the energy, qualities, and gifts of Cancer. The colonists had found a home, founded a country, stated a creed, come together to fight for their right to govern themselves. We became a free people. We became the city on the hill of human history, an advancement in the long climb humanity to freedom.

The Cancer stellium offered the blessings of Venus – land, home, a life for those who had fled Europe’s restrictions on land ownership, religion and the ability to rise above one’s station at birth. Jupiter in Cancer offered the expansive continent ripe with forests, animals, food, and room to grow. The new people were all immigrants from somewhere else seeking a new home to become a new people.

As many observers, historians, Presidents, and citizens have noted it is here that anyone can become an American in a land not birthed from blood, tribe, country, or religion but birthed from choice and contribution. The great Jupitarian expansion offered by the United States was “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Send these the homeless, tempest tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” This country was to be a beacon of hope, a new beginning welcoming immigrants. She, the United States would be the Mother of Exiles offering comfort and compassion in this land of possibilities for all. In theory it was come one, come all.

The expansion of land, of movement, of people grew to extend from sea to shining sea connected first by explorers, by wagon trains, by railroads then by highways, then by planes. The 13 colonies became 50 states and more than 14 territories. The people have grown to more than 330 million. This great land became a nation whose power and influence extended across the globe. A rich land grew a wealthy nation, a nation feeding and protecting much of the world. The Sun in Cancer became a sheltering Mother whose Mercury in Cancer spoke the words of freedom, of new life.

As Jupiter returns to its birth position this month as it does every 12 years, it is a necessary time to reflect on our creed, our history, our gifts and our future; it is also a necessary time to honestly reflect on our shadow. This land is Our Land but it wasn’t empty when our forefathers and foremothers arrived; in fact, it was inhabited by Native People who had been here living and caring for the land for centuries. This land of immigrants coming here to breathe free brought Africans captured, transported and enslaved against their will to work for no wages never to be free.

This land of plenty spawned greed, theft, and destruction as well as home, innovation and opportunity. This land of immigrants rejected equally desperate people from either coming here or living here freely based on race, religion and country of origin. Being accepted as a true or real American was harder than the promise engraved on the Statue of Liberty. It still is.

The exceptional gifts highlighted in our U.S. destiny chart continue to be a promise to be perfected. Over these 249 years freedom has grown to include more of us. Yet at this birthday immigrants who are undocumented or living in the shadows are living in fear of being detained and deported. Yet most have been and are contributing by working, by paying taxes, and by committing no crimes.

They do the jobs that support our food production, our elderly, our children, our hotels, our restaurants and so much more. They are valuable. They are worthy of the promise of the Mother of Exiles to welcome these huddled masses yearning for the freedom to live, to work, to build a life, to become Americans. We have a justice system for those Americans and undocumented people who break our laws, harm others.

We have much to be grateful for and much to face, to be accountable for and to repair. Our Cancer country can still offer a new birth for those who seek a new beginning.