When I was in elementary school, homeschooled, my mother had me memorize the Gettysburg Address. I can never quite remember past that first sentence, but it is somewhere in my being, waiting to resurface. A torn nation, with less social media, but as much pain; brother against brother, that biblical brother-will-betray-brother idea of horrific division. Really, we are all each others' brothers and sisters, but the least sign of adversity gives us self-righteous permission to forget. You lied to me. You made fun of me. You told me off and it hurt my feelings. You didn't do what you said you'd do.
...I'm completely 100% guilty of this, any of those, but I think it's important and beautiful to be reminded that we can do better. I will never, ever ever agree with a lot of people I know and have known, on many a number of subjects, but have been realizing that we all want to be happy, want our families and communities to be happy, and that's it. Everything can spring from that. Really, everything does spring from that. The desire for personal and mutual well-being.
And I know that's idealistic, utopian, and whatnot, but that's how my imagination works, and I have come to terms with the fact that maybe that will never change, and maybe my purpose is, in part, to remind people that things can be better. That we can make the idea of "heaven on earth" a reality, now, no matter what people believe about spiritual realms. We can take care of each other, eliminate the need for greed or lies for survival, and eliminate most of the bad that happens. I don't have illusions that crafty people won't cease to exist, but I do believe that much of what people do is based out of subconscious fear that they won't have what they need, which translates into meaningless lifetimes of greed, trickery, whatever. If we have what we need we have time to catch the few people left who are being jerks, because most of our time will be in caring for and loving one another...and probably also eating delicious, fresh, organic food and sipping fresh-brewed craft beer..... (;
Again, maybe I'm too idealistic, but I freely admit I know this won't happen in large scale in my lifetime. I'm ok with that. It doesn't mean I don't still believe it's some part of what is meant to be.
Anyways, Abraham Lincoln. Surely not perfect, he was a person (I haven't studied him in my adulthood so I've no idea), but part of what we consider to be the most pivotal periods of our history.
And, yet, our country still has so many things that are messed up that weren't fixed by that war, by the emancipation of slaves, that we can't talk about (LET'S TALK ABOUT RACE YOU GUYS BECAUSE IT STILL AFFECTS OUR DAILY LIVES oh wait that's not ok because we're afraid of confrontation or finding out we might be doing something wrong and need to change (even though it doesn't have to be that scary)). Things that are still a part of the overall crazy divisions going on, but that have historical bases and that could be changed if we would just recognize that they are there and figure out why and how to change then. Anyways...
I'm the Queen of Rabbit Trails, I believe.
Four Score and Seven Years Ago
The basis of these thoughts. So. What I originally was going to post to Facebook as a status update:
It feels at times that we are engaged in a new Civil War; one that is political and ideological, born, for the most part, out of media-manipulation that keeps individuals and communities from realizing that they do not, in fact, disagree quite so much as they are told they do. The governmental methods must be forgotten, for they are all flawed, in one way or another. We believe that our nation was conceived under the idea that all were created equal; we have developed that belief to include women as well as men, people of color as well as white people, and are in process of recognizing that the way we love should neither affect our equality. I am sad that so many military members sacrifice and sometimes die in this present age for what I have come to believe is mostly the greed of powerful corporate and government forces, because there are so many people (including dear friends of mine) who truly serve out of love; for country--for community--and because the whole idea is to advance the conviction that all are equal, and that a society can thrive under a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
The famously brief, marvelously pithy, speech of President Lincoln. My imagination sometimes strays to what that day may have been like, humid and cloudless, sweat pooling under fine suits, the weight of the ghosts of the fallen shifting around; no one would have thought about "history" being made, any more than we think about in our daily lives.
So here it is.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htmc
