What Abraham Said to Rock my World
I just spent a couple of days in Washington, D.C. for work. One afternoon, having my hotel two blocks from the White House, I walked around the Golden Triangle and the National Mall and took in the public sites. I've done this before, seen most everything, even a few things that people who live in the area told me they've never taken the time to see. It's spectacular. Here's a few take-aways:
There are a LOT of different races, nationalities and languages viewing these sites. Many are probably Americans, but many are also foreign tourists, who, no matter what their countrymen may say or think about Americans, still took the time to look around at our history. I was glad to be around them all.
It was hot. Not as hot as Corpus Christi gets, but it was hot. Corpus Christi gets a breeze, DC does not.
Here's a memorial that was stuck between a few buildings in an area that could be called Red Cross Square. Perhaps it was, but it wasn't obvious and I was the only person in the area, two blocks from a decent chunk of tourists. There are many sites that don't get seen as often as they should be seen.
The Reflecting Pool was cool. I've been there before and walked along it. But, remembering the pictures of Dr King and his speech there, the crowds that lined it. It was chilling, even on a hot day.
I also remember Jenny splashing into it yelling, "Forrest! Forrest!" Yeah, I know.
I got a shot of "Montana" in the World War II Memorial. I've lived in Texas for eight years but I'll always be a Montanan.
To me, amongst it all, the most impressive is the Lincoln Memorial. The last time I was here, the Memorial was undergoing restoration but this time I saw it in all it's magnificence.
The great thing was that even the back side of the enormous statue was completely done in detail. Maybe they didn't know it was going to be housed as it is and finished it because they pictured people seeing it from all angles. But if that same statue was commissioned today, I imagine they'd do the front and skip the back, knowing it would be all but ignored, butted up against the back wall of it's housing structure. Also impressive: the columns.
But the best is the writing on the wall. The carvings, actually, into marble. The entire (very short) Gettysburg Address, and even better, even more eloquent, Lincoln's second Inaugural Address, given on on a muddy, rainy day during the bitter Civil War. Lincoln is Amazing. Here's my favorite part, with a little edit for conciseness:
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. [...] Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
Wow, "would accept war rather than let it perish." What a statement. "Hey, I want NONE of this, but I'll accept it because it's what we have to do. We tried everything else, and it's come to this. Bring. It. On."
I bet there wasn't a more peaceful President before or since; not peaceful because a poll said the majority of Americans in the latest poll want peace, but peace because it's the right thing, the best thing, almost the Only Thing. But, Abraham Lincoln had to set peace aside because the war needed to be fought. The slaves needed to be freed, the country needed to be whole. Wow.
Here's the entire Abraham Lincoln Second Inaugural Address.
I once googled "was Abraham Lincoln a Christian" because I wasn't sure. Turns out, there is an argument on both sides. He's said things to indicate that he is, and he isn't. but read that address and tell me that if he didn't believe in God, he sure knew how to invoke scripture and sentiment and reason when talking about God. Faith knows little reason, at least in our world. That's okay, it's practically the definition of faith. But read this:
Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.
This is the basis of my argument when someone challenges my faith: I don't know. He's God. He's on a higher plane of understanding. I know that there is sin in the world, I know that little kids are unjustly hurt, wars are fought, people are judged as a group for things like skin color. I don't know why it happens, or if God wanted it to happen or merely left us to our own Free Will. "I don't know" is enough for me, though. I can't know how God reasons, I'm not that smart. I can only reason on a human plane, and I think I do it fairly well. Don't ask me to understand what only God can understand. Here's a perfect example, in Lincoln's words:
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove[...]
I think he's saying, "well, maybe God allowed slavery for a time, for His reasons, and for understanding only He knows, but, I believe that time is up, and now God wills it to be removed." And, it was up to them, of that era, to say, "enough." Time is up. We accept war.
As I walked around the Memorial, I thought to myself, "from Lincoln to Obama, we wouldn't have a black 44th President if Lincoln had not been our 15th President." I also thought, snidely, "I bet Obama's aiming for a statue some day." But immediately after that, I realized that if Barack Obama can bring our country together, as divided on Blue v. Red as we are now, he deserves a statue. Lincoln had a great task, to unite a divided country, one who killed many of it's own citizens in a bloody war. Though I disagree with more of what Obama stands for than I agree with, I don't wish him to fail. He fails, I fail. You fail. We fail.
