by Nils Peterson
This is what Abraham Lincoln said.
“Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility.” [Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862]
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we will save our country.” [Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862]
“It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says ‘you toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.” [Lincoln-Douglas debates, 15 October 1858]
“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.” [from a handwritten note]
And from a modern editorial, “Patriotism without criticism has no head; criticism without patriotism has no heart. Lincoln was capable of understanding both the greatness and the limits of Thomas Jefferson and the founders and still come out at the end embracing the American experiment for ‘giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time.’ And so should we.” [Editorial. NYTimes, 7/4/15]
Aaron Copland in his fine ‘Lincoln Portrait’ uses the Lincoln texts quoted above. Give yourself a present. Listen to a recording. There’s a fine one with Copland conducting and William Warfield reading the text.
The Canoe of State
I begin with a joke that went around years ago.
A woman floating in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered it when she saw a man floating in a boat below and called out, “Excuse me can you help? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago but I don’t know where I am.”
The man looked at his portable GPS and replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are 31 degrees 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees 49.09 minutes west longitude.
She rolled her eyes and said “You must be a Democrat.”
“I am, “replied the man, “How did you know?”
“Well,” she answered “everything you told me is technically correct but I have no idea what to make of your information and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help to me.”
The man smiled and responded, “You must be a Republican”
“I am,” replied the balloonist.”How did you know?” “Well, you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You’ve risen to where you are from large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep and you expect me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met but somehow now it’s my fault.”
A joke but much truth on both sides. How to keep sane in these parlous times. That’s a serious question with so much darkness in the present and possibly in the future. Hard to realize there are two sides. Hard. Hard. I used to go to a dream workshop. At one session a woman shared a dream in which she found herself caught in someone else’s story and couldn’t get out. Once, she even got away and started to live a different life in a different place, but that too was part of the other’s story and her escape had been scripted. A truly terrifying dream. At the end I commented that the dream is like the current political situation. Each of us is terrified of having to live in the other’s story. I know I am.
Think of abortion for instance. Basically there are two stories about what an embryo is: it is a human and therefore has a soul from the moment of conception – the other that the cells must do a lot of multiplying and organizing and getting together before one can consider it “ensouled.” Which story is dominant may depend on what part of the country you live in and how you are able to live in it.
Of course the idea of “soul” is another story and when that story is added to the story of “my story is right because God said it,” the difficulty rises.
Yet here’s a touch of sanity from one of my favorite poets, Tomas Transtromer. He is in Africa:
“I am welcomed aboard–
a canoe of the darkest wood. It is extremely unsteady, even
when I crouch on my heels. The act of balance. If the heart
is on the left, lean the head slightly to the right, keep
your pockets empty, make no big gestures—leave all
the rhetoric behind. That’s it: rhetoric is impossible here.
The canoe skims over the water.”
Well, my heart is on the left, do I need to lean my head a little to the right? Not easy advice, and I’m not sure how, but I keep coming back to it in my thinking. And what about rhetoric? how does one counterbalance the weight of a false rhetoric? Accurate talk does not seem the right answer. I shared the joke and some of these ideas years ago in a letter to friends before Trump came on the scene. But now how to balance his great weight and keep the canoe afloat. That’s the question of our day. It is scary to think that we sail in not the ship of state, but a canoe of state. A canoe that requires such careful balance because it is so tippable. Is there any possible way of finding balance, now that there are so many who want to tip the canoe, yes and who keep casting rhetorical stones to sink it?