The Stones Shout Out

If, like me, you think that history is a back-and-forth between what happened in the past and how we understand it, then the National Mall in Washington DC is a wonderful place to explore.

The Lincoln Memorial, finally dedicated in 1922 after some 60 years of debate and false starts on how to memorialize the 16th President, dominates the landscape.























The dedication inscribed above Lincoln's head is, to say the least, an emotional interpretation of history and a powerful political statement for a nation not yet --still not-- healed from the wounds of a vicious war.

A war that Lincoln knew would not end political and social strife.























And so it's not surprising that his memorial turned out to be ground on which that struggle continued, a hundred years after the Civil War and his assassination.  In 1962, someone defaced the memorial with a common, ugly racial epithet. A year later, Martin Luther King stood on its steps and spoke to the world. You can stand there now, and imagine. I did.











Dr. King eventually got his memorial too, after nearly 50 years.























I was fascinated by King's hands.

















They made me think of Lincoln's.

















Amazing what those hands accomplished. Unnerving what they left undone, and perhaps not just because of death.

Continue along the tidal basin path and you'll walk into the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. Another big hand! 
 






















And his little dog too ...

It seems foreign to American (and Canadian) politics these days, but once upon a time, compassion and social justice were integral parts of public policy.

My unk-in-law thinks that a visit to this memorial should be a key part of Congressional orientation. I think he's right.

And while they're at it, I'd suggest that they walk around and think about their history, and their present. That even as they appreciate the triumphal beauty of the WW2 memorial, they pause to take in the 50,000 names etched in black stone at the Vietnam memorial, as powerful a monument to a tragic enterprise that you will ever see. And look in the harrowed faces of the soldiers of the Korean war memorial.

There's a great passage in Luke, as Jesus approaches Jerusalem intent on condemning the inequity and brutality of its leadership, where his followers shout for joy at his arrival. He's warned to shut them up. But, as he points out, there is no point: "I tell you, if they were silent, the stones would shout out."

That's kind of what it's like on the Mall. Yes, it's a pile of memorials and monuments dedicated (mostly male, white) politicians and war.  But these stones also speak to powerful  movements -- social and political-- and they are not silent.