Looking out the window on this Memorial Day week-end we are a pretty divided people. We all know there are a multitude of reasons for this. And as much as I would like to blame our President—this issue has been with us for a long time. But I would add that I don’t think our President has done much to help us with this burning problem of division.
Which brings me to a Memorial Day story that dates back to April of 1866. The war wounds of the Civil War were still fresh. But in Columbus, Mississippi a group of women came together to decorate the graves of Confederate soldiers. But they also noticed the barren graves of Union soldiers and they placed flowers on those graves as well. We need to honor all our citizens living or dead. And this, I believe is the real meaning of this holiday.
What if we suddenly realized that there really is more that unites than divides us. I’ve told this story often. The old farmer trained his roosters for the county cock fights. And one morning he took his two prized roosters and put them in a cage and headed down to the cockfight. He stopped his truck, got out opened the back and pulled out the cage. It was a mess. Two dead roosters. He moaned “I can’t believe it…I just can’t believe it—they killed each other off—there’s nothing left but blood and feathers. They didn’t realize that they were on the same side.”
I’ve been reading a fine book for where we are Memorial Day 2019. Jon Meacham has written, The Soul of America. The subtitle of his book is: “The battle of our better angels.” The book takes a backward look at many of the ups and downs of our country. He reminds us that our current climate of partisan fury is not new. Some days I don’t think it has never been like this. But how I wrong I am.
There have been a great many occasions in our history when the darkness seems to have eclipsed the night. He writes about the Civil War which brought us 618,000 dead which led to the stormy days of Reconstruction . Meacham reminds us that the list goes on.The backlash against immigrants in the First World War. The resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. He talks of the struggle for women’s rights, the demagoguery of Huey Long and our isolationist policies of our country even before World War II. Remember how we incarcerated between 19,00-50,000 Japanese Americans in that war. He asks us to remember the witch-hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy that tore so many people’s lives apart. And of course he mentions Lyndon Johnson and the struggle for Civil Rights. Meacham says, “The goodness is that we have come through such darkness berfore. Time and time again we came back to the better angels of our nature.”
- Enter the arena. We cannot disengage ourselves from the difficulties of our time. We have to be informed. We have to speak up. We need to remember our better days and give ourselves to these principles. America started as a revolution—and that revolution continues to this very day. The battle goes on.
2. Resist tribalism. Engaging in this fight for our better selves takes work and patience and energy. Sometimes we all grow weary in well-doing. Those devoted to extremism on whatever side there may be does not help us. We must reaffirm the heart of who we are: “We the people.” Despite the bruhah of today—we really are on the same side. United we stand…divided we really do fall. We must listen, listen, listen to one another. We must be fair. We are not to shape our lives by the headlines and the twitter feeds. Instantism is simply instantism.
3. We respect facts and deploy reason. There is such a thing, Meacham says as discernible reality. We are certainly entitled to our own opinions but not to our own facts. Meacham reminds us the the dictators of the world have said that if you tell a lie long enough the people will believe it. President Truman added: “Well, if you tell the truth often enough, they’ll believe it and go along with you.” A free press is essential to democracy. The New York Times motto is: “Democracy dies in darkness.” Of course the press and the media pundits are not always right. They get it wrong sometimes—but we must champion the truth as we understand it.
4. Keep History in Mind. This is the power of Meacham’s book. Looking back we can see that Democracy is often a messy thing. But we must hammer out who we are—not give away the heritage of our better days. We remember the question that a woman asked Benjamin Franklin was asked after the first Congress had done its work. “What kind of a government are you going to give us, Mr. Franklin?” He replied, “A republic, Madam, if we can keep it.”
A friend of mine sent me this true story. A little eleven year old black boy, Antoine Mack lived in the inner city of Boston. Antoine was one of a number of youth sent to Camp St. Augustine, a program sponsored by the Brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist. Despite his hard life, Antoine wrote a poem that is really a beacon of light for all of us.
“The night will never stay,
The night will still flow by
Though a million stars in the milky way
pin it to the sky.
Though bound with the blowing wind,
and buckled by the moon,
The night will always slip away,
Like sorrow, or as tune.” |
| photo by Michael Seeley / flickr |
--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com
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