The American Vision

On an unending voyage of faith, 145 years young

Consider a journey.  The child in all of us, in the backseat, asks: “Are we there yet?”  The adult answers: we have come a long way, but we have far to go.

In our short passage through time as a nation, we find ourselves far beyond where we started and still far from what we seek. The arc of justice bends not only true but far.

Many nations have set out to reach a goal.  Not reaching it, they have turned back in disillusion. 

America has always been a journey without a fixed destination, some imagined utopia. It is an exploration of possibilities, progress toward a society more caring for human needs and ever more breathtakingly beautiful. For justice is not a place. It is not an arrival. The arc reaches beyond all human bounds.

Tennyson expressed it:

… all experience is an arch wherethro' / Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades

… To follow knowledge like a sinking star, /Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

…To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths / Of all the western stars, until I die.

How dare one side in our debates deride the distance we have come; how dare the other side see the journey as complete. 

Thank God, the adult in us is driving, eyes fixed on the horizon.