A line cast, a hope followedMonday, July 05, 2004
On the occasion of the United State's birth, some words that remind me that there is something I can still hold onto despite the gulfs that exist around me:
From Dennis Kucinich's Action Center for Peace:
"A giant eagle soars above the chamber of the House, etched in glass against a huge canopy, it spreads its wings over the assembled Congress. I noticed it instantly when I first walked onto the floor as an elected member. The eagle is quick, daring, possessed of exceptional vision. It is symbolic of our national spirit, which when it soars is awesome to behold. Secure in our eagle's beak is a prophetic banner on which is inscribed our nation's original motto: E Pluribus Unum -- Out of Many, One. I think of my own journey as one of 435 members of the House representing 50 states. Here, I, and those who chose me, establish the merger of We the People of the United States. The proclaimed unitedness which the banner forever unfurls above the heads of the Members of Congress speaks not to the "idee fixe" of flat history, but challenges us to be mindful of our interconnectedness, how the choices each one of us makes are choices for all of us, that the idea of unity precedes us, is present before us and calls to us from a distant future. The very first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, in performing the act of dissolving "the political bands which have connected" people with one another confirms the underlying power of cohesiveness. The consciousness of interconnectedness together with the principle of freedom was the conceptive thought which birthed a nation. "We the People" is also prologue. The constitutive is intuitive. The awareness that America exists as the thoughts, the words and the deeds of each and everyone of us can empower all of us to begin to create today the nation that we and our children will live in fifty years from now."
From Dennis Kucinich's Action Center for Peace:
"A giant eagle soars above the chamber of the House, etched in glass against a huge canopy, it spreads its wings over the assembled Congress. I noticed it instantly when I first walked onto the floor as an elected member. The eagle is quick, daring, possessed of exceptional vision. It is symbolic of our national spirit, which when it soars is awesome to behold. Secure in our eagle's beak is a prophetic banner on which is inscribed our nation's original motto: E Pluribus Unum -- Out of Many, One. I think of my own journey as one of 435 members of the House representing 50 states. Here, I, and those who chose me, establish the merger of We the People of the United States. The proclaimed unitedness which the banner forever unfurls above the heads of the Members of Congress speaks not to the "idee fixe" of flat history, but challenges us to be mindful of our interconnectedness, how the choices each one of us makes are choices for all of us, that the idea of unity precedes us, is present before us and calls to us from a distant future. The very first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, in performing the act of dissolving "the political bands which have connected" people with one another confirms the underlying power of cohesiveness. The consciousness of interconnectedness together with the principle of freedom was the conceptive thought which birthed a nation. "We the People" is also prologue. The constitutive is intuitive. The awareness that America exists as the thoughts, the words and the deeds of each and everyone of us can empower all of us to begin to create today the nation that we and our children will live in fifty years from now."
