Each Wednesday,     Tim Carson shares 
the wonderings of heart and mind and the inspirations and quandaries of the spirit. You are invited to wonder along with him through the telling of stories, reflections on faith and observations on the events that shape our lives.  

Tim Carson

 

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Wednesday Wonder
October 7, 2015

Last Wednesday I shared the story of Pope Francis addressing the U.S. Congress and lifting up four luminaries from American history: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. Today let's reflect on Lincoln.
 
Lincoln is perhaps the most written about American President and for good reason. He lived in tumultuous times, made incredibly hard decisions, endured agonizing resistance from oppositional forces in the divided nation, stood on enormous high principle, and in the end handed over his life for it.
 
He was one who endured many personal and professional failures. He was one who bore the grief of his country when every choice was fraught with suffering. And he was one who carried something not unusual for his time, a Biblical worldview that recognized the presence and participation of a Creator, however indiscernible that providence was.
 
Like many other national leaders Lincoln would never be described as a conventionally religious man. His was the God of history and nations and personal decision forged in the furnace of a personal faith. Though you wouldn't often find Lincoln inside a church building on the Sabbath his reading, speech and writing were often filled with scripture and reflecting on the events of the day in the light universal divine principles. At his loftiest he knew the difference between human pride and selfish struggle and the exalted perspective of a Creator above it all. Blood spilled was blood spilled and the Creator loved those on both sides even while judging the veracity of actions from an absolute perspective beyond the human vantage point.
 
And of course, to the point of Pope Francis, Lincoln was the liberator. We have to remember that political lines and definitions were exactly opposite our present situation; Lincoln and his Republican Party were Federalists - working toward justice and harmony in the Union as a whole - while the Democratic Party was primarily composed of "states' rights" citizens from the South. Those lines remained primarily intact until the next great revolution, the continuation of the Civil War in the 1960s with desegregation and further pursuit of equality. With Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's Voting Rights Act and other legislation to overturn discrimination, the political tables turned and the party of Lincoln changed; it moved from Federalism to the States' Rights posture of the former South. That continues to this day.
 
In 1861, however, Lincoln's Republican Party fought for the endurance and authority of the whole Union - while striving to eliminate slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation precipitated a turn in the Union and its destiny that could never be forestalled. War was imminent and certain. The nation was plunged into incalculable suffering. And though the losses on all sides made the word "victory" a cloudy and bitter one, the hard won continuation of the Union would prevail. States would not be understood as entities unto themselves, but rather a part of the whole. The abolition of slavery would become a universal abolition, not a state-by-state choice. The Union principle of universal law was applied to all states. And so today Federal law trumps State law when push comes to shove, as it did in the desegregation battles of the 1960s.
 
Regardless of the historical moment, no matter how calamitous it is, leadership, especially principled leadership, is never easy or simple. To lead is to suffer for and on behalf of the people. Moral issues must become political ones and some are worth fighting for. Leaders are complex, errant, make huge mistakes, and exercise poor judgement. Lincoln was no exception. This man with clay feet was thrust into an impossible circumstance. But out of that clash of oppositions truth rang as much as it could be heard. You will remember the last lines from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and his emphasis on the way sacrifice insures freedom for all in the midst of a great contest of wills in which many shed blood:
 
"... 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. "

 

@Timothy Carson 2014

 

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