... over President's Day.
We missed our annual reading of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.
This is the finest speech ever made in the English-speaking world.
The kids and I usually use this marvelous little book, for children. Its only words are the address itself, which are, famously, few. Its images are powerfully, sorrowfully drawn, and invite us to go through slowly. Reflectively.
Several years ago, I also read this marvelous little book, for adults. The author, Ronald C. White Jr, is dean and professor of religious history at San Francisco Theological Seminary. The book is a line-by-line reading of the address, as if it were Torah commentary. It puts the speech in the context of the day, but also draws out how unique it was in that time, for its very brevity as well as for its calm but firm insistence upon reconciliation at a moment that lesser mortals would have seized as triumphant.
"With malice towards none, charity towards all... let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds... to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
May you rest in peace, Mr. President.
ps. Another wonderfully illustrated picture book, this one depicting the Gettysburg Address, is this one, illustrated by Michael McCurdy.
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