"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." – Abraham Lincoln

Discussion Questions:

Which dogmas are now inadequate and why?

What are the difficulties, the real difficulties we face?

In what ways must we think and act anew and what would that look like?

What does it mean to disenthrall ourselves?

I can tell you this, Lincoolns words, spoken today, would be no less shocking then they were in his context. New thinking, fresh each morning, is almost too big a challenge for most of us. Old dogmas, to which he refers, are never the core, unchanging truths; they are those that were adequate for their time and quite situational.

We need fresh situational thinking that is constantly reconnecting to timeless truth.

I am most moved by the call to disenthrall myself because I am not entirely sure what he meant. But I do know i must be disenthralled WITh myself and come unglued from my static self-absorption and cloistered attitudes.

I think that there is much entralling that needs to be corrected at every level and layer of the body politic (meaning all of us). Self-interests and narrow, contextualized views of the world have us looking at each other and not seeing, talking at each other, but not hearing, and seeing our opponents as enemies.

We need Lincoln.

Listen.