I took a walk on my birthday. Quite unintentionally really. I was dropping off a rental car at National Airport (real DCers still call it that. You can call it Reagan if you need to) and was intending to hop the metro home. But being a bit of a plane spotter, I hoofed it down the length of the one-building terminal and across the employee parking lot to Gravely Point, arguably one of the best spots in the US to see planes take off, if that’s your thing.
Not one to let the long way home pass me by, I followed the walk path down the Potomac until it (the path, and the river) met Memorial Bridge. After some pretty impressive car dodging I managed to slip across the road, up a steep hill, and to west side of the bridge. After a moment of silence and respect for the fallen at Arlington National Cemetery (yes, I really did this, and you should too) I started the trek across the bridge. If you haven’t done this, you should. The Lincoln Memorial sits majestically on a plateau of marble rising high enough to look as though it’s sitting on the high point of the arch of the bridge (check out the pics in this post).
Reaching the end of the bridge I decided to check out Mr. Lincoln’s impressive home in white granite. I’d seen it as a kid (obligatory for any grade school child living withing 200 miles of our nation’s capital) but really don’t remember. My family owns a house in North East and we often wander down to The National Mall to check out art, tourists, and Republicans (all entertaining in their own way) but we don’t ever seem to make it past the museums.
So up I go.. some 50 steps up to meet the man… Abraham Lincoln. 50+ feet high, sitting calmly, stately in a giant chair (not a throne) of white granite, looking weathered but hopeful.. he deserved to have a seat.
Flanking our 16th president are 2 chambers. To his right, the Gettysburg Address. You think you know it (four score and so on) but you don’t. Read it. To his left, his 2nd inaugural address. You definitely don’t know this one. Read it too. Seriously. Then come back and read on here…
Welcome back. Inspiring, no? I read both of these texts in 2 foot high letters carved into the walls of the Memorial and found my mouth literally hanging open at the end. You’ve just read them (right?) so you know what I mean. That man stood in front of a few hundred Americans and spoke of sadness and turmoil, the heavy weight all the country was carrying from many years of civil war with little end in sight. He spoke of reaping what we sew, and even waxed over the possibility that God, though certainly punishing those fighting to perpetuate slavery, was indeed punishing all of the United States for its inability to see the obvious travesties the nation had committed.
And this got me to thinking about our new president, and modern statesmanship. We are so disillusioned and jaded by the false promises and tweaked out sensory overload of film, tv, the internet, and advertising that we hardly recognize true inspiration anymore. And I wonder if the people of Lincoln’s time didn’t feel the same way. They’d been lied to, or put out, or forced to war against their countrymen, and they were tired. And pissed off. And scared. Did they look to Lincoln and see a talking head? Or did they take comfort in his deep grasp and ownership of the gravity of the days behind and ahead?
I see our president reaching for unbelievably lofty ideals of a country united, of the strong standing up for the weak, the rich reaching out to the poor. An exchange of ideals and principals, not a cataclysm of them. A call to service, to community, to arms, to industry. A true challenge to believe our great nation must not parish from the Earth, but must survive, through dedication, compromise and understanding.
Are these ideals long lost? Are these the words of elder statesmen quickly mentioned in history books and relegated to forever sit behind white granite pillars, reminding us of simpler times when words mattered before things became more complicated? Or are they the shoulders on which our statesmen today stand, reaching even further, through far more turmoil, conflict, and hatred than Lincoln did.
We can always be inspired. We must be. Our nation is the inspiration of the world…for better and/or for worse. But the time is never lost when a man or woman’s voice can raise above the rancor and tell us “yes, we can do great things. Those days are not lost, but just beginning.”
