Now comes the hard work – after the heady day of signing the document that was written to explain our break with Great Britain, the founders had to think about what comes next, that is, after the fighting was over and the surrender of British General Cornwallis to George Washington and the French fleet in 1781. Building a nation is hard work and it took another six years before the Constitution was put to pen.
For us, it is no different. How to develop a consensus, an agreement on not just our history but on our present is also hard work. In his opinion piece in The New York Times, David Brooks commented that ‘great nations thrive by constantly refreshing two great reservoirs of knowledge,” the first being the stories we tell about ourselves as a moral framework of who we are.
The second, he called “propositional knowledge,” analyzing where we are and where we are going. This isn’t done by a collection of stuff from the internet but based on an interlocking network of assessments by professionals, scientists, scholars, among others. What we face today, he wrote, is an epistemic crisis. Our collapse of trust in producing the shared stories have led to the rise in animosity and tribalism, no different, quite frankly, from the tribalism that tears many countries apart. We need to rebuild our common history to not only survive but to become the America we should be.
Prayer for the Day
Wandering in a wilderness of our own making, we come to you, O God,
For not only discernment but a renewed commitment of who we are;
Besieged by divisions that result in unbridled anger toward others,
We need to remember that we are called to be your people.
Bestow on us, O Lord, a renewed commitment to justice and mercy,
And help us to remember that we need to grant your grace to all.
In the name of him who is the instrument of your grace,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Let America be America again, let it be the dream it used to be…
Langston Hughes, American poet (1901-1967)
O Land, the measure of our prayers…
Julia Ward Howe, from her poem Our Country (1861) (1819-1910)
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
Give light to my eyes or I will sleep the sleep of death
Psalm 13:3