Thanks

Day 79. Thanks.

Today is the traditional day of thanks for Americans, our Canadian friends having already celebrated the blessings of the harvest earlier in October. As declared by President Abraham Lincoln in the late days of fall 1863, a day of rest, reflection and feasting to remind our Nation that in spite of a Civil War having drawn brother against brother, we still had much to be grateful for.

It's not lost on me that Lincoln saw fit to recognize the need for our Country to come together with family and friends, to reunite around a meal prepared with loving hands. He gave us many things to think about while he led our Country. His first inaugural address asked citizens not to pursue a war against one another, for surely it would break the Nation. He was only partially right, as his Gettysburg address only two years later would heal the cracks the Civil War had begun.

A mere two years later, a madman, enraged by Lincoln's speech that began the climb into reconstruction which would seek to erase the wounds of slavery, took his life in an attempt to snuff out Lincoln's reiteration that all men are created equal. We should be thankful on this Thanksgiving that Booth may have taken the President's life that day in 1865, but the ideas of freedom and equality are still burning bright.

I've been to the Peace Light Memorial in Gettysburg more times than I can count, more than any of the other monuments in the park. I always pause on the walk up Oak Hill, to look towards the battlefields. Oak Ridge was the scene of the heaviest fighting in the early afternoon of July 1, 1863. It was the high ground for the Confederate Army for that day's battles to the north of town. While the losses that day were minimal, the number of combatants were the highest of the campaign, with over 50,000 men engaged. Cemetery Hill, Blocher's Knoll: they had more fierce battles but Oak Hill provides a unique view over them both.

I haven't made the walk in almost ten years, but I can feel the adrenaline from that day. With that adrenaline, I can also feel the fear. The fear, to a man, that they might not live another day. But more prevalent, I can feel thanks. The men that fought that great battle did so for all of us that celebrate our Thanksgiving today. More than any other emotion, thanks. Thanks that so many, over 46,000 of our own citizens,gave their lives in that hot July weekend, so that we could sit around a table today with our loved ones. Thanks that President Lincoln would see fit to memorialize them with what would become one of the most iconic speeches in American history.

The most important part of the Gettysburg Address is why I give thanks today. That I live in an America where, in spite of the seemingly miserable conditions of things, this is still possible:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 


Lesson Seventy Nine: Never take anything for granted. Always be thankful.

651 to go...