68 bar steady 29.67 3mph NE dew-point 56 Beltane, cloudy and warm
Waxing Crescent of the Flower Moon
“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
A wise thought from our third greatest president (after GW and Abe). What we doubt we can do today will not happen tomorrow. It may even fade from the horizon line of possibility altogether. A terrible example is the 3/5’s compromise. The generation which founded our country had many leaders who knew slavery was a burden too great for the Republic to bear. Among them were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Too many, though, doubted a solution to slavery was possible at this time and so agreed to count 3/5’s of the slave population when it came to census figures determining congressional representation. This doubt obscured slavery’s tragedy, a holocaust of freedom, in a nation founded on the principles of freedom and liberty for all.
The payment for these doubts came due in 1861 with the Confederate shelling of Ft. Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina’s harbor. The next four years would exact a price in blood so high and a rent in the body politic so deep that this nation has not recovered. The tragedy compounded during reconstruction as freed slaves became tenant farmers, sharecroppers in states with Jim Crow laws. Lynchings. The KKK. Segregation. Limited practical voting rights. Employment discrimination.
Think how much further along our society would be in a movement toward a common culture, one shared by all Americans regardless of race, creed, gender, sexual preference or national origin if our founding fathers (yes, fathers) had set aside their doubts and made real the full promise of the American revolution.
With Obama’s candidacy we may be ready for a third movement forward toward such a culture. The Civil War was one. The 1950’s and 1960’s were another with Brown vs. the Board of Education, the Civil Rights act and the struggles of Martin Luther King, the Black Panthers, the Black Muslims–especially Malcom X, CORE, the NAACP, SNICC and grass roots uprisings in many American cities.
Take stock of the doubts you have today about what you may realize tomorrow. They are the great barrier reef in your psyche between the ego’s fears and the manifestation of your full Self.
Some time outside this morning laying down weed preventer. This is prologomena to a thorough weeding this week before I take off for Alabama. A major focus this week will be helping Kate. She’s going to be here with the dogs for 10 days, again, after 6 days last week. Anything I can do now to make those days easier will be good.