This Costly Liberty

Memories of the thoughts we didn't think - but thoughts we loved and engaged in if only for a time. I wonder if Jackie O, or Ethel, or Corretta Scott King - if any of these three would have traded it all in, for life, love and longevity? Would they trade the movement for that? I guess it is reasonable to think is that they probably would have. Those three probably revisited those days over and over in their minds as helplessly as a it could only be. When there was really no true remedy to that anguish. The only solace have could come in the thought that fate plays a role that we cannot tweak. But we already know that? After all no one lives forever… right? But they do!


History brings so much to our table, so much to gain and learn from. For every war there is a victory and for every tale there is a hero. Unfortunately there are also great losses for every war and every great hero does not make it to the other side of the river to tell the stories of the journey. I can imagine that Mrs. Lincoln had wished she had never heard the words Civil War or Ford's Theater. Her place in history is also stained by tragedy.

Washington survived scurvy, and many years of his life were spent in battle. FDR presided over the Great Depression and World War II from a wheel chair. To think that this is just recent history - what about Julius Caesar, Jesus, Socrates? What plagues the inspirers of thought and thinkers is the ideas that are not popular yet. The praises that are not yet sung but soon will be. The things that we are most interested in but too afraid of to bring light to.

Scarves and big dark classes, glamour galore, money and friends could not separate Mrs. Onasis from a day in Dallas, not ever. Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. King also felt the shock and pain that Mary Todd Lincoln became overwhelmed by. Their children and those after that will be linked for the ages - just as Jonathan said to David in the book of Samuel: There will be a bond between us and our descendants forever (paraphrased).

Their humble offering being that of peace, love and forbidding acceptance left them to be slain by those that didn't accept it. The irony of history is the separation between the rewards we reap and those that were in the fields to harvest those rewards. The few men and women that carry the torch so high and strongly that the fire can never go out.

I call out to you the widows of these men that sleep now and some of you sleep beside them. if only to say thank you for your heroism too. For carrying those feelings of fear and unrest but not allowing them to take your life with them. I thank you for pushing on with causes and courage that took us all places that we didn't know we would go. With that thanks comes the honor of your own legacies, like Mary the mother of Jesus, ladies we will not forget you either. Your smiles, and faces go on to pages and places that will be seen by all those that will continue to benefit from what you saw fit to give your life to. Your time and effort, your love and foresight, your life's work, we have benefitted from too. History knows your names because of a collected gratefulness for your being.

And to think this came into my mind because of a song…Abraham, Martin and John.