I heard this report on NPR Morning Edition this morning. It brought to mind my own experience.
“There's this moment at a homecoming and a memorial or burial where the national and a local are entwined in this project of belonging,” said Wagner, the author of What Remains: Bringing America’s Missing Home from the Vietnam War.
Please listen to the audio report, which differs somewhat from the text version. It includes an additional quote from Sarah Wagner that I think is important, which speaks to the role of ceremony and tradition.
In a moment when it seems there is no common thread that unites us, perhaps this does. If only briefly, and episodically.
I'm just past Lincoln's inauguration in Erik Larson's Demon of Unrest, where I learned Seward inspired the better part of the close of Lincoln's first inaugural. It resonates today, perhaps as it did then:
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:28 Monday, 27 May 2024