Duncan Newcomer’s Abraham Lincoln Quiet Fire 8: Four Score and Seven

This entry is part 8 of 33 in the series Duncan Newcomer's Quiet Fire

WHAT A POWERFUL PHOTO! This is one of only 2 confirmed images of Lincoln on the day he delivered his Gettysburg Address in 1863. The power of the photo certainly doesn’t lie in its visual clarity of Lincoln himself—it lies in the visual truth of the overwhelming forces surrounding Lincoln at this time. This photo was taken just as Lincoln was arriving, hours before he would deliver his address. He appears here without his trademark stovepipe hat, bareheaded and looking downward, right in the middle of this vast sea of people who are almost submerging him in the press of bodies.

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EDITOR’s NOTE—In honor of Memorial Day, which began after the Civil War, we are including a chapter from Duncan’s book of collected radio commentaries, 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln, which recalls Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863. On that battlefield, Lincoln forever changed our understanding of what that tragic conflict represents in our history.

And, here is Duncan …

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By DUNCAN NEWCOMER
Host of the ‘Quiet Fire’ series

This is Quiet Fire, a meditation on the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln and its relevance to us today. Welcome.

Here’s a Lincoln quote for you that most of us know by heart: “Four score and seven years ago …” The quote is, of course, the memorable opening to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which he delivered on November 19th, 1863.

CLOSEUP of Lincoln (center) from the larger photograph.

Note that he says “four score and seven,” rather than “87 years ago.” In understanding the spiritual life of Lincoln, there is a reason why he chooses to start with the number 87 and there is a reason why he chooses the archaic “four score and seven.”

Often, Lincoln thinks and speaks more like a spiritual poet than a rational politician. At Gettysburg, Lincoln was attempting to invoke the “Spirit of ’76,” when the banner-raising Declaration of Independence was signed by people with the commitment to risk their lives, fortunes and sacred honor.

As Lincoln saw it, 1776 was when the blood of the American Revolution began to flow—and the idea of America was conceived. For him, the nearly mystical idea of a freed and equal people governing themselves was the real origin of America. Those powerful ideas were, Lincoln believed, even more important than the Constitution, which came a decade later.

As Lincoln looked back, he believed that the conception of America—while not exactly an immaculate conception—was much more of a holy idea than a law book. And it is conception and birth that are the metaphors and verbs he used in this speech.

We have two really different frames of mind here: the fever and blood of an ideal versus the debate and ink of a document.

So, Lincoln used biblical language—not arithmetic—to name the value of the moment. “Four score and seven years ago” is how Lincoln, who had memorized much of the Bible, echoes the language of Psalm 90’s meditation on the life span of a human being, especially in relation to the eternity of God:
The days of our years are threescore and ten;
And, if by reason of strength, they be fourscore years,
Yet is their strength labor and sorrow;
For it is soon cut off, and we fly
away.

In other words, human life is short—perhaps only 70 years. Even if we do reach 80 years, labor and sorrow will use up our strength. Lincoln did not get to 80 or 70, and nearly all of his labor was in sorrow.

Lincoln could not help himself in casting his comments in biblical tones, because for him, the vocabulary of the holy is what was called for when a battlefield (and all it represented) was being dedicated to the sacrifice of young American warriors. Secularizing forces in our modern Western world have drained our religious traditions of many of their riches, encouraging us to prize material success over spiritual depth. Lincoln was never fooled by that temptation.

As a spiritual poet, Lincoln stood at the cusp of this looming secularization. He was born at the height of what we call, today, “that old-time religion,” and his mind was formed in the thought patterns of the Bible first and then the law. So, as he pulled out his little slip of paper and began his address at the battlefield, it was natural for him to reach, first, for the Bible. He looks to the past because that is where biblical authors look as they survey the history of God’s people. Lincoln’s restless mind was always trying to understand his moment within the grand sweep of history.

At Gettysburg, he does not gain his inspiration from the crowds around him; he does not look to the stars and the trees and the beauties of nature. He looks to history.

Why is looking to history a spiritual thing to do? History is bigger than we are. History is a driving force, pushing us from behind into a “now” that is colliding with the future. Lincoln’s favorite line from Shakespeare was:
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends
Rough hew them how we will.”

All of Lincoln’s thoughts, words and actions flow from his humility: his sense that he is small and history and God are vast. The sweep of the eternal infinite is the mindset and the vocabulary of a spiritual person.

Lincoln believed that we cannot escape history, but we can take up our responsibility and find, if not our significance, then our honor—even down to the latest generation.

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Stay Tuned!

We will let you know when Duncan is able to begin recording the radio versions of these weekly reflections again—and we will provide links to that audio as well as these texts.

Coming next week: We will take an imaginative journey. Like John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (one of Lincoln’s early and favorite books), we will see Lincoln encounter two spiritual heroes on his progression. One is Joan of Arc, who becomes Saint Joan, and the other is John Chapman, who becomes Johnny Appleseed.

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Care to Enjoy More Lincoln Right Now?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions. ALSO, you can order hardcover and paperback from Barnes & Noble. In addition, our own publishing house offers these bookstore links to order hardcovers as well as paperbacks directly from our supplier.

 

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Duncan Newcomer’s Abraham Lincoln Quiet Fire 9: A Unique Spiritual Quest and The Pilgrim’s Progress

This entry is part 9 of 33 in the series Duncan Newcomer's Quiet Fire

This 1820s edition of the original 1678 Pilgrim’s Progress was packed with vivid illustrations that would have caught the eye young readers.

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By DUNCAN NEWCOMER
Host of the ‘Quiet Fire’ series

One of the black and white illustrations from that early 1800s edition of Pilgrim’s Progress. Lincoln surely would have found it an exciting tale.

This is Quiet Fire, a meditation on the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln and its relevance to us today. Welcome. Here’s a Lincoln quote for you:

“That I am not a member of any Christian Church is true, but I have never doubted the truth of the Scripture; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular. … I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.”

Lincoln is running for Congress. It is 1846. His opponent is the Rev. Peter Cartwright, a locally famous Methodist evangelical preacher. Those rumors of Lincoln being a free thinking infidel have once again been raised. So, Lincoln responds with these words on a handbill to the Seventh District of Illinois. He wins the election 6,340 to 4,829.

As a young man, Lincoln sometimes was called an infidel. In the setting of New Salem, Illinois, that meant he and a few of his bookish friends held a wide variety of views. They were not orthodox Protestant Christian views. That does not mean he was what we might call an infidel today.

He could have thought, for example, that the Bible was not literally inspired, or that the miracles of Jesus were not scientifically factual, or that the Creation only took a week. And he did not want to join a church. Lots of infidel views.

Yet Lincoln was fiercely interested in the whole matter of religious and spiritual life. At that time he even wrote a deep essay on the anger of God that he shared with one of his older male friends.

Lincoln was inspired by Pilgrim’s Progress, the widely known and read book by the non-conformist preacher and writer John Bunyan. That 1678 book was well known even on the frontier. The hero, Christian, meets all sorts and conditions of people along the path of his spiritual progression. Lincoln would have liked that. He was one of those open-minded questers.

But some people in New Salem in 1830, if they had known, might have wondered about two other spiritual figures from history. Johnny Appleseed, for example. He was about to take his mission for God and orchards into the Great Lakes area of the American frontier. As a mystic unchurched preacher, would they think he was an infidel?

What about Joan of Arc, a saint so inspired by God that she moved a nation to crown a king as divinely ordained—and yet they burned her at the stake? What would they have thought of an untutored military genius and saintly Roman Catholic girl?

To grasp the wide reach of Lincoln’s spiritual life we can easily imagine him liking and wanting to know such spiritual heroes.

Johnny Appleseed was a common and a rustic man with an uncommon mission: to plant the mystical word of God and to seed hundreds of apple orchards and douse village sites throughout the expanding west. John Chapman, Appleseed’s real name, was a non-conformist as was John Bunyan.

In Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian, meets all sorts of people who influence his spiritual journey. Bunyan himself was a maker and mender of pots and kettles, a tinker. Like Johnny Appleseed and Lincoln, Bunyan had little formal schooling. Yet he had great faith struggles and extraordinary language skills. John Bunyan was often thrown in jail for his non-conformist preaching. He had rugged endurance as did Lincoln and Chapman.

These three men were great walkers and talkers, men of intense religious fervors and wide-ranging beliefs. Lincoln traversed on foot all of Sangamon County as a surveyor. Bunyan and Appleseed both were itinerant foot-bound preachers.  While Bunyan was a mender of pots, Appleseed is often pictured wearing a cooking pot hat, not, of course, to be confused with Lincoln’s stove pipe hat.

Lincoln’s spiritual beliefs were similar to those of the iconic Johnny Appleseed. Both John Bunyan and John Chapman would easily have been close and kindred spirits to Abraham Lincoln in his early New Salem, Illinois, days. Shirt tail boys grown into rustic men with fervent faith and rhetorical skill.

Chapman was an evangelical follower of Emmanuel Swedenborg, himself an Enlightenment thinker, a mystic, and an inventor, among many other things. Swedenborg believed that God was peeking out through not only the Bible but also nature itself and through human reason.

These were beliefs Lincoln could agree with. Swedenborg also struggled with the existence of evil, such as war. He believed in universal salvation, as did Lincoln. He even had a belief in good angels that would meet each of us in heaven and bestow upon us the better angel of our own nature.

In the landscape of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress we can imagine Lincoln meeting Johnny Appleseed, a frontier soul brother. We can also imagine him meeting a military and spiritual saint, that untutored young girl from the 1400’s Joan of Arc. Lincoln was always looking for an inspired fighting general who could lead the sacred national cause to victory.

Joan of Arc was a saint and like Lincoln she is hard to explain. How did such a mysterious figure ever come into history? No one, to this day, can explain how either of them came to be who they were.

At the end of his massive study of the life of that 15th century courageous young girl, Mark Twain himself concludes that we just cannot explain her. But Twain does write, on page 452 of his long-researched and passionately sincere historical novel Joan of Arc, that an artist who would paint Joan “should paint her spirit.”

Twain’s astonishment at the being of Joan of Arc rests on her pure and humble spirit and her bold unprecedented achievement for France against England. She lays the ground and the myths for the French nation. Her superhuman and even supernatural means of achievement led Samuel Clemens himself into a humble reverence, a new voice, without a trace of mockery or arch humor. He is as sincere as he will ever be in print.

Joan of Arc was a miraculous general and the fullest expression of obedient suffering and a noble, even holy, death.

Lincoln, however, had to find an able general in U.S. Grant, and then he left us with a nearly miraculous vision of a nation without malice toward the enemy, with charity for all and care for the wounded, and then his martyr’s death.

Lincoln was certainly no infidel. He was truly a John Bunyan type of pilgrim, with a nature so inclusive that he could be at home with these two remarkable religious figures.

In the torchlight of such a parade we too can be led down in honor even to the latest generation.

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Care to Enjoy More Lincoln Right Now?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions. ALSO, you can order hardcover and paperback from Barnes & Noble. In addition, our own publishing house offers these bookstore links to order hardcovers as well as paperbacks directly from our supplier.

 

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Duncan Newcomer’s Abraham Lincoln Quiet Fire 10—When all three meet: Lincoln, black people and the Bible.

This entry is part 10 of 33 in the series Duncan Newcomer's Quiet Fire

TWO HISTORICAL MILESTONES IN A SINGLE IMAGE: Frederick Douglass met Lincoln face to face three times. This famous painting depicts his first appeal to Lincoln in 1862 to combat discrimination in the Union army against black soldiers. The main effort to recruit black regiments began only after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect in January 1863. No photographs were taken during that meeting. This 1943 painting of the encounter is a milestone for two reasons. First, it broke new ground because it was an official U.S. government commission painted for public display by an African-American artist, William Edouard Scott. Second, it depicted Douglass in a clearly dominant position as he argued the case of black troops with a seated and weary Lincoln.

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By DUNCAN NEWCOMER
Host of the ‘Quiet Fire’ series

This is Quiet Fire, a meditation on the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln and its relevance to us today. Welcome. Here’s a Lincoln quote for you:

“In regard to the great book, I have only to say it is the best gift which God has ever given man. All the good from the Savior of the world is communicated to us through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong.” Lincoln is replying to the gift of a Bible from a group of black visitors to the White House, some former slaves, some ministers. This quote is part of his reply early in September, 1864.

Lincoln’s life is inseparable from the Bible. If you subtract the Bible from Lincoln’s life you don’t have Lincoln. Lincoln, of course, is also inseparable from the life of black people in America. Without the black presence in America there would be no history of Abraham Lincoln.

It is then revealing to recount some of the stories of when all three meet: Lincoln, black people and the Bible.

In this 1864 event, Lincoln sees the Bible as a gift from God. Much of his own religious struggle was with Enlightenment Reason versus Biblical Revelation. But he comes to think—as he once told his best friend Joshua Speed—that you should go as far as you can with reason and then go the rest with revelation. The Bible is the gift of God’s word and the best one. It is a revelation not a conclusion.

In the grand narrative of American culture there is no other book, then or now, with this transcendent status. Lincoln does not, however, see the Bible as an American book. It is “the great book” with a message for the world. Lincoln’s eyes were on the whole world. In Lincoln’s view, “the work we are in” is to “achieve, and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” Those were his last Inaugural words.

For Lincoln the Bible is not the white man’s book.

When Lincoln, black people and the Bible converge in his life, it is revealing to see Lincoln’s point of view, and a point of view of the Bible, but also to see what might be learned from the black person’s point of view.

What might this 1864 “deputation of colored folk” as one old historian puts it, be seeing and thinking here with their Bible gift? This is in the aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation. This delegation is bringing sincere thanks. It is also near the time of the all-important next Presidential election. They and he might have some reasons to meet and share their loyalty to each other. What, then, might be the most meaningful and appropriate gift that they could put into his hands, to have him hold up in front of them?

The Bible is as much the spiritual property of black people as it was for this white man Lincoln. It could be a gift, then, between equals in terms of their biblical standing. The Bible could be a proudly given free gift from the former slaves to the present President.

There are other significant moments when Lincoln, the Bible and black people interact. One is when, as a young man, he receives the gift of a Bible from his best friend’s Mother, Mrs. Speed. The Speeds were slave owners. He would have been assigned a slave to care for him on his visit, no doubt. Lincoln is visiting Joshua Speed, his first roommate from Springfield and longest friend. He is in the deepest of “blues.” This motherly woman gives him a Bible and offers its support. He responds that if he could but take it on faith he knew it would help him. Lincoln promises to read it but he notes his own skepticism.

That Bible would have been in his bags as he took a steam boat back from Kentucky to Illinois. It is on that boat that he has the indelible sight of slaves, strung, he later writes, “like trout on a line,” but singing and sharing joy and music while in their chains.

Lincoln, a Bible, and black slaves.

Years later a former slave, a woman, his wife’s dressmaker, sees Lincoln one evening in the White House reading the Bible. Elizabeth Keckley had bought her freedom from her St. Louis master for twelve hundred dollars.

We see an echo of this moment in Stephen Spielberg’s movie “Lincoln” when the two meet on the steps of the White House. They have a profound moment of wondering about the future of America and the races. They see each other honestly in terms of race. The script by Tony Kushner has Lincoln admitting his own ignorance, his lack of real experience in seeing black people as equals. “I don’t know you Mrs. Keckley.” It is a stunning and real moment of honesty from the Great Emancipator.

In her biography Elizabeth Keckley writes, as if a continuation of this scene, that she had seen the President walking back from the War Office. “His step was slow and heavy and his face sad. Like a tired child, he threw himself upon the sofa, and shaded his eyes with his hand. He was a complete picture of dejection.” He reported the news from the War Office was “dark, dark everywhere.” He then, she reports, took a small Bible from a stand near the sofa and began to read.

Fifteen minutes pass, as this is reported by Stephen J. Vicchio in his book Abraham Lincoln’s Religion, she writes, “I glanced at the sofa and the face of the President seemed more cheerful. The dejected look was gone; in fact, the countenance was lighted up with new resolution and hope.”

Lizzy Keckley, as she was known, then reports walking behind the sofa to see just what it was Lincoln was reading. It was the Book of Job. She says she could almost hear, “the Lord speaking to him from out of the whirlwind of battle saying ’Gird up thy loins like a man; I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.’”

She adds, “Ponder it, oh you scoffers of God’s Holy Word, and then hang your heads for very shame.”

The Bible was a bond between Lincoln and black people. When Sojourner Truth, featured in a recent movie, “Harriet,” wrote to Lincoln that she feared he was in danger like Daniel in the Lion’s Den, he wrote back a letter full of references to the Book of Revelations.

On October 29, 1864, when the intrepid and intuitive Sojourner Truth visited Lincoln at the White House he showed her that Bible the ministers from Baltimore had given him. Their gift was dated “Baltimore, 4th of July, 1864.”

He shared with her that he often did feel like Daniel in the Lion’s Den. She is reported to have said, “…if the lions did not tear you to pieces, I knew it would be God that has saved you; and I said if he spared me I would see you before the four years expired, and he has done so, and now I am here to see you for myself.”

In the Great Chain of Being that we can call the spiritual life of Lincoln there are many links—none stronger than that between himself, the Bible and black people.

That link can hold us in honor down to the latest generation.

 

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Care to Enjoy More Lincoln Right Now?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions. ALSO, you can order hardcover and paperback from Barnes & Noble. In addition, our own publishing house offers these bookstore links to order hardcovers as well as paperbacks directly from our supplier.

 

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Duncan Newcomer’s Abraham Lincoln Quiet Fire 11—Raising a Flag and Contemplating the Sacred Pillars of America

This entry is part 11 of 33 in the series Duncan Newcomer's Quiet Fire

THE 34-STAR U.S. FLAG, which only was used for two years after the admission of Kansas as a state in January 29, 1861. It became obsolete on June 20, 1863, when West Virginia became a state. As a result, Lincoln was the only U.S. president to fly the 34-star flag. No stars were ever removed from the official flag—not even during the Civil War. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.

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By DUNCAN NEWCOMER
Host of the ‘Quiet Fire’ series

This is Quiet Fire, a meditation on the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln and its relevance to us today. Welcome. Here’s a Lincoln quote for you:

“May my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if ever I prove false to those teachings.”

This is a sacred quote with a secular tweak.

Lincoln is quoting from Psalm 137. We may know this psalm best from musical versions that feature its words, “How do I sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.” Lincoln is using the powerful poetry of this Psalm. It proclaims the Hebrew captives’ faith to remember Jerusalem even while captured in exile in Babylon.

Bible words would often spring to Lincolns lips. What faithfulness, what teaching, is Lincoln affirming here?

The “teachings”—and that’s the word he substitutes for “Jerusalem”—are the words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He is not in exile in Babylon but he is in imminent threat of assassination.

His courage in the moment is to prove true to the idea of America. Like the singer in the Psalm who is remembering Jerusalem, they both are in dire straits.

It’s Thursday evening, February 21, 1861, and Lincoln is in Philadelphia on his over-thousand-mile train trek to Washington City to be sworn in as 16th President of the United States. Despite the danger he is outstandingly calm and resolute.

He will soon be taking off his stove pipe hat and wearing a soft Hungarian freedom fighter’s cap and a shawl to disguise himself and enter Baltimore on a secret train to Washington.

But he is in Philadelphia because he promised to be there. The next morning it will be George Washington’s birthday. He will be raising a brand new American flag, with a new star for the state of Kansas fixed on a field now of thirty-four.

At noon that day, down from Maine, also in danger, his Vice President Hannibal Hamlin and his wife Ellen will be secretly blanketed up in a sleeper car. They will be left unrecognized by hooligans breathing death and whisky.

Meanwhile Lincoln is pledging his faith in the teachings and principles that came from Independence Hall in Philadelphia, as he will remember, 84 years ago. He says this is a sacred hall. He has said Americans are God’s almost chosen people, and he will say, also spontaneously, “I would rather be assassinated on the spot than to surrender” his loyalty to the Declaration of Independence and to the principle of equality enshrined.

He testifies with these words, “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence…. (and earlier)… all the sentiments I entertain have been drawn from (those) which originated and were given to the world from this hall.”

He has, in a way, pondered this moment all his life. When he was 10 years old and had read in Grimshaw’s History about the American Revolution, he wondered what extraordinary “something” was going on in these events. What mysterious power or truth or idea?

Now the day before in Trenton he had said he considers himself only the “humble instrument of the Almighty” in the task before him. About this flag-raising he will say, “I could not help feeling…. as I have often felt, that in the whole proceeding I was a very humble instrument. I had not provided the flag. I had not made the arrangement for elevating it to its place. I had applied a very small portion even of my feeble strength in raising it. In the whole transaction I was in the hands of the people who had arranged it. And if I can have the same generous cooperation of the people of this nation, I think the flag of our country may yet be kept flaunting gloriously.”

What is a stake here is Lincoln’s way of seeing himself. Humble, yes. But indeed, as would be revealed to all his close friends on his death bed in four years, his arms were anything but feeble. In his dying night shirt the dignitaries there were astonished at the muscular power of Lincoln’s arms.

Also at stake is his stoic courage. The people in Philadelphia noted later how very calm and without alarm or fear he was when told of this first assassination plot.

And more at stake is this:

In the religious mind, a consciousness first found in traditional peoples, the world of stone and tree, is filled with spirit. Something more, something else. Some power that makes things be.

This force is what makes some things sacred, the very power of life being made real and present. The cosmos can show the holy. And the holy is what is most real, most valuable, most powerful, most full of Being itself.

In these moments in Philadelphia, with Abraham Lincoln, there were things in America’s life that he saw as sacred:  the flag, Independence Hall, and the Declaration of Independence. The religious mind knows that they are just things and also more than just things.

It is this religious feeling, first found in ancient peoples, that makes the world sacred, and can still, in the minds and hearts of those who see and feel such things, be a light, like Lincoln’s, to live by in honor down to the latest generation.

This is Duncan Newcomer and this has been Quiet Fire, the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln.

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Care to Enjoy More Lincoln Right Now?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions. ALSO, you can order hardcover and paperback from Barnes & Noble. In addition, our own publishing house offers these bookstore links to order hardcovers as well as paperbacks directly from our supplier.

 

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Duncan Newcomer’s Abraham Lincoln Quiet Fire 12—Why do we refer to our most eloquent president as ‘Quiet’?

This entry is part 12 of 33 in the series Duncan Newcomer's Quiet Fire

FANCIFUL AND FUN—BUT NOT FACTUAL—This was a popular lithograph envisioning Lincoln leaving Springfield for his long journey to Washington D.C. It’s a cheery image pro-Lincoln families could hang on the wall. But—it’s not how that scene actually unfolded. (Below, today, we have a journalist’s eye view.)

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By DUNCAN NEWCOMER
Host of the ‘Quiet Fire’ series

This is Quiet Fire, a meditation on the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln and its relevance to us today. Welcome. Here’s a Lincoln quote for you:

“Friends—No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting.”

These are the first words of Lincoln’s Farewell Address, given on a rainy morning, February 11, 1861, at the railroad depot in Springfield. A thousand or so of his friends and neighbors, no doubt some barking dogs as well, are up early to bid him fare well as he leaves home to become President.

It is called an address. It is shorter than the Gettysburg Address. Very uncharacteristically, Lincoln spoke without notes. His words are prayer-like and they invoke the mystic chords of memory and the abiding presence of the Divine Being who can be “everywhere for good”.

The words of his Address are so prayer-like that you can sense the silence within them and the silences that must have fallen upon the upturned faces listening to him.

The heart-felt sincerity of his words that day are obvious in the way he delivered them—spontaneously, without having written down any script in advance, not even notes.

HENRY VILLARD about the time he covered Lincoln’s rise to the presidency. (Click his photo to read his Wikipedia biography.)

However, once he spoke them, his parting words were so poignant that Associated Press correspondent Henry Villard begged him to commit the words to paper. So, as the train jolted along the tracks, Lincoln and his secretary did just that, which is why we have them today.

Had Villard not insisted, Lincoln would have left the station, the words only held in the memories of the crowd, and would have returned to his more characteristic silence.

Silence follows Lincoln like a spiritual friend wherever he goes. Sandburg has written that the element of silence was great in the making of this man. Many of the personal reminiscences written by the men and the women of his time will say that conversation with Lincoln began with his extended and silent listening to them.

This, then, is the “quiet” that is in the quiet fire of Abraham Lincoln.

Now one reason so many people, for so many years, have found, and are finding, something about Lincoln they love is that he was a many-sided person. There is hardly a characteristic of Lincoln for which he did not also possess the opposite. He had many paradoxes, a Euclidian array of equal opposites. And they all held together. He didn’t just hold the county together, he kept his head together. It wasn’t just 36 states he eventually held in union.

People find a side of Lincoln they love: his logic, his heart, his humor, his sorrow, his power, his humility, his voice, his written words, AND his unspoken inside side.

This is reason we can talk about the spiritual life of Lincoln. He was extraordinarily deep, inside. His was a well spring.

There is as much fire in Lincoln as there is quiet. His fire gives off light, heat, inspiration and power. His quiet contains a sense of yonder, his intelligence, and his well spring of goodness.

We have a language for these paradoxes in Lincoln. We can talk about introverts and extraverts. In his own paradoxical way Lincoln was defiantly both. You can feel the introversion in his Farewell Address. “My Friends, No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feelings of sadness at this parting.”

This is as close as we ever get to Lincoln saying out loud, “You just don’t know how I feel.”

His law partner Billy Herndon once said that he felt he never really knew Lincoln, that no one did, that Lincoln held himself close to his own chest in a quiet almost mysterious way.

Of course in this Farewell Address Lincoln is sharing his inner life. And they do know how he feels because he is addressing their inner life too. In fact, emotionally, every one there is in his situation as well—they are the other side of this painful parting. He is addressing the unspoken feelings that everyone is feeling, feeling inside. He is giving voice to what they all are feeling.

But no one else was in his situation, no one else is going off to be President. The only such company Lincoln can feel would be the silent presence of George Washington, whom he mentions and who was also once going off to be President of a new nation in crisis.

Silence is how the spirit is present, in joy and in sorrow, in terror and in beauty, in deep feelings and in long thoughts. It is the way we feel awe and horror.

Silence is how we start and end prayer. Silence is how we feel before we applaud the uplift of a symphony, or how we feel unspeakable joy at the emerging site of a new born child. Silence is what we feel when we have sighs too deep for words, or gasp at some unspeakable wrong.

This is the range of silence that Lincoln brought with him from the wilderness to Washington.

We can love the inside story of this man, noting, as maybe a few did on that rainy morning, that it was February 11th and the next day their gawky neighbor would have his birthday, his fifty-second. He would have celebrated many birthdays in Springfield. But this often tightlipped man makes no mention of that in his farewell.

This is a bit of the quiet that is part of the paradox of Lincoln’s quiet fire, and it can follow us down in honor to the latest generation.

This is Duncan Newcomer and this has been Quiet Fire, the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln.

And this is what the day actually looked like, thanks to a journalist’s sketch

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Care to Enjoy More Lincoln Right Now?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions. ALSO, you can order hardcover and paperback from Barnes & Noble. In addition, our own publishing house offers these bookstore links to order hardcovers as well as paperbacks directly from our supplier.

 

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Duncan Newcomer’s Abraham Lincoln Quiet Fire 13—Ultimately, we are responsible for our faces.

This entry is part 13 of 33 in the series Duncan Newcomer's Quiet Fire

FINISHING LINCOLN’S NOSE—Between October 4, 1927, and October 31, 1941, Gutzon Borglum and 400 workers sculpted the 60-foot-high carvings of United States Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln to represent the first 130 years of American history. These presidents were selected by Borglum because of their role in preserving the Republic and expanding its territory. The carving of Mount Rushmore involved the use of dynamite, followed by the process of “honeycombing”, a process where workers drill holes close together, allowing small pieces to be removed by hand.

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By DUNCAN NEWCOMER
Host of the ‘Quiet Fire’ series

This is Quiet Fire, a meditation on the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln and its relevance to us today. Welcome. Here’s a Lincoln quote for you:

“After the age of forty a man is responsible for his face.”

For fans of Lincoln this is an often-quoted sentence. Lincoln’s point of view is that the inner life of a person, and the ethics and spirit that follow, are the responsibility of that person as they age. Over time something inside should show up on the outside.

The “Ancient”—as his young male secretary John Hay called him—had been asking Lincoln how he felt about a particularly vile man they had just met.

Lincoln’s wisdom is that actions from inner goodness, or inner evil, will show up on the outer face.

Lincoln is talking about an ethical perspective. We can also see that art brings the inner life up and out. Artists learn how to bring things inside to the outside, whether that is the soul of a painted flower, the spirit in a moving dance or the emotion in playing music.

Spiritual life also works from the outside in. We may express our spiritual life from the inside to the outer world, but we are inspired from the outside in ways that touch our soul or heart inside.

This is can be seen in the grandeur of a Cathedral, for example. The large and holy external building holds us small and little inside. We take the spirit in, we are inspired and moved.

Large statues do the same thing. A statue in a cathedral or outside is larger than the worshipper for a reason. It is to inspire the believer to feel that no matter how small and finite they may be, this statue is a reminder that there is a big and beautiful goodness out there in the world, a God-send. We can be opened up to feel something larger than life.

This inspirational purpose of statues is also true in the secular world, and in the civil religion of any society. In daily headlines this summer, we see how important these large iconic statues are in a nation’s life. That is why dozens of statues have been removed since the May 20, 2020, killing of George Floyd. Wikipedia set up a special page just to list the many monuments that have fallen.

When we put someone on a pedestal we mean it to inspire us to a greater good. That wouldn’t work if the statues were smaller or lower than we are. And if and when we no longer feel that a greater good is re-presented—then it needs to come down.

Have you ever stood inside the temple-like columns of the Daniel Chester French Lincoln memorial, itself ninety-nine feet high. You look up at the nineteen-foot-high statue of Lincoln who is seated, and who, if standing, would be twenty-eight-feet tall.

In those moments we can have an experience of our inner feelings being connected to a bigger and a better world. Out there.

That is why our statues are so important. We need to and want to feel small only in the presence of something larger that is good.

Now Gutzon Borglum, the man who made Mount Rushmore with its large faces and heads of four Presidents, deeply knew all this about artistic expression and sacred inspiration especially through large sculptures. He wanted the goodness of Lincoln to seep into us while we are temporarily reduced in size and so humble. From the ground level at Mount Rushmore to the top of the four presidents is 500 feet.

Lincoln’s face and head are more than twenty times larger than the life masks that Lincoln had made and Borglum had held in his hands. He had come to value the inner life of Lincoln and wanted as an artist to make the outer version of Lincoln.

Borglum was a Danish immigrant’s son from Idaho. This was secular American work he was doing, but it uses a time-honored traditional spiritual practice from the world’s religions.

That is a sacred pattern. It is evident in the famous encounter that the Roman Catholic monk and writer Thomas Merton had on a journey to Asia, just a few days before his death. Merton, at that time, was reaching out to other religious leaders, especially Buddhists. He met with the young Dalia Lama, he dialogued with D.T. Suzuki, and also with the Protestant Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Hebrew mystic and scholar.

On this journey, in Sri Lanka, Merton encountered the four large statues of the Buddha at Polonnaruwa. It was a life-changing experience for him, famously called his Illumination.
At the large preserve near Polonnaruwa he approached the reclining Buddha that is over 46 feet long and over 15 feet high, a standing Buddha who is over 22 feet tall, and two other statues.

Merton had written that, “The presence of God is like walking out of a door into the fresh air…and breathing it in.”

He had that outdoor open-air inspiration when he made a pilgrimage to these enormous Buddhas. He wrote that “Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things….an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves became evident and obvious….All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear.”

His smallness next to the very large images gave him a spiritual perspective, an orientation to all that really matters and a discernment of all that does not really matter. The rock itself seemed alive with the presence of holiness, and his own real self had come into full view. He felt it inside himself, next to that great outside. “All matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya,” the Sanskrit word for the most sublime and essential reality in the universe, the cosmic body of the Buddha—what Merton, as a Christian, would know of as the self-emptying love and mercy of God.

The sculptor, Borglum, once said, “We want to see what we care for. We want to feel the private conscience that became public conduct.”

Lincoln was responsible for his face and at the end of his life he shows peace and compassion. We care about this spiritual journey, from large inspirations to true inner thoughts and feelings, we too can be lighted down in honor even to the latest generation.

This is Duncan Newcomer, and this has been Quiet Fire, the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln.

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Care to Enjoy More Lincoln Right Now?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions. ALSO, you can order hardcover and paperback from Barnes & Noble. In addition, our own publishing house offers these bookstore links to order hardcovers as well as paperbacks directly from our supplier.

 

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In Our Struggle for Freedom, the Truth is Not in Our Statues—It’s in Our Souls

This entry is part 14 of 33 in the series Duncan Newcomer's Quiet Fire

SOULS and STATUES—Throughout his career, James Baldwin explored the painful struggle of living with opposites, including despair and hope, injustice and compassion, truth and compromise. Throughout his life, Baldwin had little patience with the hyperbole of monuments, which is why he had an ironic grin as he agreed to pose with this statue of Shakespeare in central London.

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By DUNCAN NEWCOMER
Author of 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln

This is Quiet Fire, a reflection on the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln, and its relevance to us today. Welcome. This is Duncan Newcomer.

Here’s a Lincoln quote for you: “Don’t kneel to me. That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank him for the liberty you will enjoy hereafter.”

It is the morning of April 4, 1865, and Lincoln has made an inglorious rowboat landing from the James River in Richmond, Virginia, and is walking up the streets of the burning and defeated Confederate Capital. Most of the Whites, including Jefferson Davis, whose chair Lincoln hopes to sit in briefly, have fled. Excited gatherings of former slaves recognize Lincoln’s tall body and silk hat, and a man has fallen to his knees in front of Lincoln. People are calling him “Father Abraham.”

Lincoln has a truly humble heart and is a clear-minded theologian. He says: “Don’t kneel to me. That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank him for the liberty you will enjoy hereafter.”

Thomas Ball—the creator of the Washington, D.C., and Boston Commons statue of Lincoln—clearly had not heard what Lincoln was saying. But many of us, Black and White have heard. Today, we cannot abide the humiliation of the Black man on his knees and we sorely need the humility of Lincoln and his relationship to God.

Can we take a moment to listen better to Lincoln’s real words?

The great value of the Lincoln Memorial is that his voice is all around us in words etched into the walls: Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Addresses and the Gettysburg Address. We can read. We can hear.

We know what Lincoln was saying: Don’t kneel to me. I have never pretended that I am a god.

If now a statue seems to say otherwise, Lincoln would agree: We should take that down.

Frederick Douglass at the 1876 dedication of the Washington D.C. statue in question said that it “showed the Negro on his knees when a more manly attitude would have been indicative of freedom.”

We can understand also why Douglass agreed to speak there, despite his misgivings. President Grant was there. Some of the Supreme Court was there. Much of Congress was there. And the statue itself was fully paid for, $17,000, by newly freedman’s money, the first being $5 from a young Black woman. Blacks paid for but Whites designed the statue.

So there were other voices speaking from that statue on that dedication day—and Douglass used the occasion to urge his White listeners to recognize that Lincoln had set them on a path they should courageously pursue.

That is why history is so nuanced and complex. There are many voices.

The “democratic mind” has been defined as one that can hold seemingly polarizing ideas—many differing, nuanced and complex voices—in its head at the same time. Not because it is confused, but because it is realistic.

As many episodes in the Quiet Fire series have shown, Lincoln certainly had a democratic mind. And, so have other great American sages, especially the poet, author and journalist James Baldwin. We cannot read Baldwin’s writings without glimpsing his dual mind and heart.

Baldwin’s dual-mindedness was there as he was growing up as a sensitive young man struggling to live in the world as it is. He needed to find some measure of love and hope in his heart, despite the cruelties, injustices and blindness he encountered everywhere he turned. He struggled mightily to find some solid ground between bitter despair and love.

He described a kind of double consciousness that Black people in America must master. Baldwin wrote that his sense of double mindedness was to “hold in one mind forever two ideas which seemed in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life, as it is, and men as they are….(and) the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in ones’ own life, accept these injustices as common place but must fight them with all one’s strength.”

This was his only way to “keep his own heart free of hatred and despair.”

For that reason, Baldwin rarely wrote about Lincoln. On the few occasions that Baldwin did address Lincoln’s legacy, he did so to attack White Americans’ mythic adoration of heroes like Washington and Lincoln. Baldwin agreed with Douglass that Lincoln’s role as savior of slaves was a morally compromised choice mainly aimed at saving the Union.

The subject of Lincoln was too painful for him to contemplate, Baldwin wrote in a 1982 essay. “I am weary of Lincoln Memorials, of the American piety, which is nothing less than a Sunday-school apology for genocide.” Baldwin was letting his readers see the depth of his despair with his nation’s centuries of injustice.

His essay continued: “The Republic is a total liar and has never contained the remotest possibility, let alone desire, to let my people go.” Baldwin warned his readers: Most White American heroes from Lincoln to the Kennedy brothers will break your heart if you look too deeply into their motives, their compromises, their limitations.

And yet it is our lot in life as Americans to grapple with these painful truths, struggling toward a hope that we are somehow stumbling forward. It’s a painful journey, Baldwin wrote. “To be a Black American is much worse than being in love with, tied to, inexorably, mysteriously, responsible for, someone whom you don’t like, don’t respect, and don’t dare trust.”

It is a lover’s struggle, Baldwin finally concludes. And this struggle is inescapable, if one truly is honest about the dilemmas in our history—and our future.

The irony is that, in the spiritual life of Lincoln, we find this same paradox: a struggle every day to hold together a sense of purpose in the midst of opposites that threatened to swallow up all hope.

Perhaps as a result of 2020, we may commit ourselves to spending less time gazing at someone else’s idea of a statue—and more time with the authentic voices of great sages like Lincoln and Baldwin.

Perhaps they may light a pathway so that we, too, can search for the humility, balance, hope and power that animated their lives.

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Care to Enjoy More Lincoln Right Now?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions. ALSO, you can order hardcover and paperback from Barnes & Noble. In addition, our own publishing house offers these bookstore links to order hardcovers as well as paperbacks directly from our supplier.

 

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