It's not easy to be a superhero this election season, but I'm now armed with slightly more loving heart thanks to my imaginary lover, Abe Lincoln.
The picture above was taken at the Huntington Library & Gardens tonight, just before my friend Leanne and I went in to hear Lincoln scholar and historian, Ronald C. White, Jr. speak about the almighty "other" speech of Lincoln's.
I have spent a good deal of time with the Second Inaugural Address as every time I'm in D.C., without fail, I visit my dear Abe at his Memorial (where I always, without fail, valiantly fight the urge to climb into his lap). Now, thanks to Mr. White I understand this brilliant sermon-clothed-in-an-inaugural-address far better. Lincoln thought it was his greatest work. Frederick Douglas thought so too. Now I have seen the light and recognize the fortuitous bit of timely wisdom I need to get through this election season.
Such a delicate assignment to give this address as the war came to a close. Cheers would have erupted if he had celebrated the North's victory or shamed the South's attempt to tear apart the country. But he did nothing of the sort. In 701 words he did everything in his power to bring the country together in peace, mourning the gravity of everyone's losses, and praised the country for moving toward ending of "one of those offenses...that God wills to remove."
Only fifty four days after this speech was uttered, Lincoln was assassinated. People marked their mourning status with silk badges with what is now my new mantra, these four words plucked from his final speech:
with malice toward none
I'm not saying the rest of this road to election day will be easy or judgment-free but I'm going to cling to this mantra like a vine in the jungle.
Lincoln's lovely tap on the shoulder comes synchronistically only days after having my very first conversation with a Trump supporter. I had been wondering if anyone in my immediate orbit was a supporter. I was hoping I could speak to someone sane about what they saw in him. I wished it wouldn't be a stranger, but frankly didn't want it to be anyone too close either, for fear their reasons might put a wedge between us forever.
On Monday I went to dinner with a fairly new friend, and I thought he was joking when he first mentioned he was a supporter. He keeps it tucked away delicately, like a pocket square accidentally shoved just out of sight.
We ended up having a very long, extremely peaceful discussion. It was hard to hear many of his points, his defense of what I consider incendiary rhetoric. At one point I felt like crying. It broke my heart to hear that he thought Obama was a bad president. But I also really got that just like everything in life, our life experiences give us lenses through which we see the world. The sum total of my life experience makes me adore Obama and Hillary. The sum total of my friend's life and his daily experiences in his profession give him a very different perspective.
Yet, in the end, as we talked through all that we each wish and hope for the country,
I realized he and I were much closer than we appeared in that teeny tiny mirror called politics. We just have different ideas of the right way to get there. Wounds need binding. Things need fixing. Peace needs nurturing.
My man Abe could be calmly reading these words from the Capitol stairs today:
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 borne 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.
Ron White said a woman he met recently at an event said she was going to write in Abe Lincoln on the ballot. I think if we work on living with malice toward none it might clear the way for us to all make the most perfect choice for ourselves and our country.
