An Abrahamic Invocation
Today one might be forgiven if in Jersey City, home to the nation's oldest continually operating Lincoln Association, they look not just at a mystic Lincoln statue, but up, out to the bright blue sky, and hear voices.
Maybe they know tomorrow is Mardi Gras and hear the voice of a famous New Orleanian turned New Yorker musician; raised with a Jewish family; and sing as a kind of prayer,
“I see trees of green
Red roses too
I see them bloom
For me and you
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world...”
But we are not here to praise famous men; we are here to honor one, which most likely thought what wonderful world this could be when Union comes before self.
It is in this spirit that a novelist and Civil War Historian awakened with purpose on February 12,1938; Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. He began to shave.
While holding his razor, an idea for a story came to him complete from start to finish...He immediately put pen to paper and was so proud of the result that he sent it to everyone from The Saturday Evening Post to local farm journals.
No magazine wanted to print it.
Undeterred, the writer had 200 copies of the story printed and sent as Christmas cards to friends. One of the cards went to a Hollywood agent who asked for permission to offer the story to movie studios...and that is how It’s a Wonderful Life became a script for a movie.
A Civil War historian inspired by Abraham Lincoln on Lincoln’s birthday wondered if someone like Abe wondered had his life mattered...
Republican Jimmy Stewart played the lead of Lincoln, I mean George Bailey, in the film. It is widely reported that his tears in the climactic scene were real. PTSD from his time as a combat fighter pilot in World War II; not his talent as an Academy Award winner, informed his performance. The role mystically led him to reconcile himself.
Friends; it is like that. The roles we play can change us.
It’s a Wonderful Life
What Wonderful World
Let us be reconciled to ourselves and bigger than our pasts as we look to the future:
“Our creator we wish to thank you for those who have gone before. For families of faith who share songs.
Let us praise you for artists who put words to feelings; that we might hear in them your purpose.
As we celebrate Abraham Lincoln today let us think of Abrahamic faith which gives birth not to just Jewish, Muslim, or Christian faith but faith in a more perfect Union.”
“Let us now sing the praises of famous ones...
Their offspring will continue for ever, and their glory will
never be blotted out. Their bodies are buried in
peace, but their name lives on generation after
generation.” Ecclesiasticus 44:1,14. Amen.