Now three Republican states – Ohio, South Carolina, and West Virginia – are sending National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. It’s a really wonderful idea if the troops are deployed correctly. The photos have them on the Mall and in Georgetown. They should be encouraged to go into the buildings to check them out as well.
Just think of what they might experience! Lessons in natural history – No, Virginia, Adam and Eve did not walk with the dinosaurs. In art – the power of Caravaggio, the subtlety of Mary Cassatt. The wonder of the Spirit of St. Louis and the Mercury capsule at the Air and Space Museum. The beauty of plants at the Botanical Garden.
And in Georgetown, to enter a bookstore and see more books than exist in their hometown libraries; they might even buy and read a book. Like people who go and travel abroad, they will experience a new world, one larger and more exciting than what they had at home, not to mention talking with people who might actually teach them something about tolerance and acceptance of something new and different.
Prayer for the Day
Thankful that you have given us the gift of curiosity, O God,
We pray that you open the eyes of all who walk on the earth;
Grateful that you have given us minds to question, O Lord,
We pray that you enlarge our hearts to welcome all.
Be with us, O Holy One, as we search for answers,
For these are difficult times for all.
In the name of the One who is our guide,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
The modern museum has multiple purposes – to curate and to preserve, to research and to reach out to the public. They challenge us and ask us to question our assumptions about the past and the world around us.
Kate Williams, British historian and author
A museum is a place where one should lose one’s head.
Renzo Piano, Italian architect, including museums
There is in wisdom a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle,
Mobile, clear, unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen,
Irresistible, beneficent, humane, steadfast, sure, free from anxiety,
All powerful, overseeing all, and penetrating through all spirits
That are intelligent, pure, and altogether subtle.
Wisdom of Solomon 7: 22-23