The Bush administration is mentally girding us for, and herding us toward, a pre-emptive strike in Iraq. Contrary to the United Nations Charter, we are going to wage war on a nation as sovereign as our own. Our flag is one of many flying in United Nations Plaza. Who are we to impose order on the rest? On the president’s say so, America is about to take on its designated enemy in the name of freedom, democracy and the American people. As one American person, I do not lend my name to this cause.

The American flag does not stand for the right to take the law unto ourselves in our own selfish interest. Yet I can see it coming, a call to rally ’round that flag as if by some twist of reality it was Iraq about to attack us. We are becoming what we fear the most – terrorists lashing out at a world we blame for threatening our lifestyle and traditional beliefs.

The more I look at Old Glory, the more I ask what it stands for. The more I ask, the more mysterious it becomes. What is this emblem that speaks for us when we are afraid and unsure what to do? What does it mean, this piece of cloth?

I see six long stripes, three red and three white; seven shorter stripes, four red and three white. Thirteen in all, reminding us of the founding colonies split so many ways, yet balancing their differences (agricultural and industrial, slave-holding and free) to speak with one voice. Fifty white stars spread on a ground of deep blue. For the 50 current states, certainly, and that many states of mind. Sixty-four design elements in three different colors collectively interacting to make up the flag we reach for when our meaning goes deeper than words.

Like our flag, America is a nation whose wholeness flows from the diversity of its elements – its people, states, groups and institutions – not in isolation but interacting with one another. Our nation looks and speaks from every perspective. We are no monolith but a multitude. The flag looks the same in each hand but stands for a colorful spectrum of deep personal experience.

We display these colors in remembrance of the 2,999 who died Sept. 11, 2001. They were a cross section of working America. Men and women, old and young, native and foreign born, right and left, hawk and dove. The flag stands for each as a distinct individual, and for the group collectively as representing us all. We easily imagine ourselves in their place in the burning plane, the stairwell, the office. The flag stands for our realization it could have been us.

How does that work? How can a flag connect people who ordinarily don’t feel connected? People who on most days take one another for granted as faceless and anonymous.

The flag stands for us all. For the dead and the living who mourn. For this land that feeds, clothes and shelters us. For skies overhead and waters below. For mountains and forests. For our hopes as individuals, families and members of all sorts of groups. For the unborn who will survive us when we are forgotten.

The flag, then, belongs to no particular group or system of belief. It implies nothing about our politics or support for our leaders. It is far larger than that. In standing for us all it stands for the integrity of the whole, the unity made possible by our stunning diversity. No one owns the flag, as no one owns us – not even the president.

What is this bit of colored cloth? A challenge to every one of us to be who we are and to do our best at all times. An invitation to wish our neighbors well. A reminder of the struggle behind us and the struggles ahead. And a mystery beyond that, opening onto the wonder of life itself, the reason we are here, and how we are to act to make the most of our gifts.

To fly the flag is not so much to make a statement as to ask a question: Am I doing all I can as a world citizen to make the best of this moment that will never come again?

As one patriotic citizen of Maine, America and the Earth, I feel it is my duty to oppose aggression, even by my own nation. Especially my own nation, which includes my name on its rolls. If I am attacked, I will defend myself. But I will not strike first.

Rather, I will raise my voice, expressing the questions and doubts deep in my heart. Before I wave the flag in a show of national unity, I will ask what that flag stands for in my personal life. Nowhere do I find preemptive strikes as part of that meaning.

When I take up the flag, I take it up in the name of justice, peace and diversity, not the hawkish opinions of a few advisers in Washington. The flag is not theirs; it belongs to us all.

Steve Perrin lives in Bar Harbor.