Letters to the Editor for Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024

We are in a perilous time in this country and in our war-torn world. We have religious traditions in this country, but many of them are tainted with scandals and excesses by religious “leaders”. This has left our faith communities un-focused on strengthening our national resolve to bolster each other in peacemaking and reconciliation to pursue a more perfect Union. I have a suggestion that I hope we can all consider in this pivotal election season. I would like us to try a common plea, every day . . . to say a prayer . . . to call upon our “better angels” to give us wisdom to do justice, to act with civility and respect toward each other, to build a healthier and caring future for our children, not to demean and distort the news about our institutions and fellow citizens and leaders. I am convinced that the mystery we will likely never understand of “angels” does embody what we also call “grace” . . . the grace and energy and power to move mountains . . . accumulated in the “wisdom of the ages” in what Martin Luther King called the “moral universe”. That is our source of wisdom and grace and resolve to restore damaged relationships. We desperately need however to ask for it daily, to connect to it, to notice the channels of it in the goodness of our fellow citizens, not in their shortcomings or mistakes. We need to ask for it every day, especially this year, this election season. As Abraham Lincoln appealed to the nation in his First Inaugural Address, let us ask that “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.”

- Dr. Bill Hirt, Dayton