The February 2 edition of Style has, as its cover story, the first in a five-part series on the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War & Emancipation. This installment in the series is an interview with U of R's Ed Ayers and it's well worth a read. My favorite lines, an Ayers quotation, are as follows,
"The Civil War is woven into all the hard questions about American Society...The sesquicentennial gives us a way to see that this is all part of the same story."
Yes, indeed. As Dr. Ayers says, "History never stops."
May God give us the patience and the courage to attend to the hard questions, the hard questions of our day.
The other day I was handed a column by E.J. Dionne from back in December ("Don't spin the Civil War"). His wise and trenchant words are timely as we ease into the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War & Emancipation.
The more honest we are, the more free we are. And we should settle for nothing less.
We cannot quote him often enough, when Jesus said, "The truth will set you free."
And that truth is a truth, not about battles and leaders of yesteryear, but a truth about today, and a truth about us.
A Tuesday NYT article on the Sesquicentennial is well worth a read. My favorite line is from Mark Potok, Director of Intelligence at the Southern Poverty Law Center, "These battles of memory are not only academic. They are really about present-day attitudes."
May God help us to have the courage, compassion, and good judgment to take this opportunity (the Sesquicentennial) to do something authentic and something for the common good.
Amen, amen.
Pictured: A depiction of the battle at Fort Sumter (The New York Times)
Tony Horwitz's Sunday NYT column, "The 150-Year War" is superb: he writes about the Civil War as
"a national reserve of words, images and landscapes, a storehouse we can tap in lean times like these, when many Americans feel diminished, divided and starved for discourse more nourishing than cable rants and Twitter feeds."
Amen, man! Beautiful!
And he goes on to speak of the land (our land) itself as "a vast and accessible Yosemite of memory."
Wow!
Above is a picture I took at Malvern Hill just yesterday. As Horwitz says, "In an electronics-saturated age, battlefield parks also force us to exercise our atrophied imaginations."
As we lean into the Sesquicentennial, let us pray, indeed, that the Spirit helps us exercise our imaginations, for the sake of our country, and, for that matter, for the sake of the world.
And, let us pray, may this season of reflection open us to fresher and more courageous ways of being Americans.
Michael Paul Williams' column today reflects on a regrettable distortion of the historical record, which appears in a current textbook used by some of Virginia's fourth graders. Corrective action has been taken by the book's publisher (a sticker). That's certainly a good thing, the corrective action, that is; however, the error itself draws attention to something too large for any sticker to cover, namely, the invaluable importance of sticking to the truth.
As we swing into the Sesqicentennial of the Civil War & Emancipation, this is a lesson worth iterating and reiterating.
He says, "If I didn't have those people back there, I would never have had anything to write about. That's where I got all my stories from. My life is from them."
"My life is from them."
Blessings upon Mr. Gaines, and blessings upon his ancestors.
Amen, amen.
Pictured: Ernest Gaines revisits the Cherie Quarters, where his family lived for generations, near the False River, Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. Photo by Philip Gould
And, of course, this Christmas, tonight, and tomorrow, new memories are being made; a Carol sung, pure and exquisite; an old friend; warm, endearing words exchanged; a first Christmas for a new grandbaby; a candle lit, a face aglow, eyes agleam.
More than fifty times, in his published writings, Barth refers to the Grunewald image; and, indeed, usually, it is precisely in reference to John, and John’s relation to the figure of Christ; as he points.
Barth (and Grunewald before him) understood John’s sole purpose to be to serve as a pointer to Christ, a reference to Christ, a witness to Christ.
Subscribe via RSS
The February 2 edition of Style has, as its cover story, the first in a five-part series on the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War & Emancipation. This installment in the series is an interview with U of R's Ed Ayers and it's well worth a read. My favorite lines, an Ayers quotation, are as follows,
I had the privilege of hearing 