February 20, 2006

On this President's Day, my thoughts are on Abraham Lincoln, who was able to say in his 2nd Inaugural address, with reference to the two sides in the Civil War:  "Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes (God�s) aid against the other."

 

Obviously it was more literally true then, but I think that a great leader like Lincoln would still understand today that forces or love and compassion can exist on all sides of a conflict. 

 

He closed that address -- written close to the end of his life -- with these words:    "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation�s wounds; to care for him who shall have bourne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan � to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves and with all nations."

 

May it be so.