The twin pillars
We stood outside the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. Clouds intermittently blocked the sun while the wind swirled leaves discarded by trees and litter discarded by imbeciles. The January sky barely allowed temperatures into the 40s. It was quiet.
We looked to the familiar rails of the old Lorraine Motel, the rails that had appeared in our history books and in our nation’s nightmares. That’s where he died.
It was the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend and we stood outside the pandemic-closed museum. It still attracted those who wanted to pay some sort of homage to the man, the one who seemed to predict his own early death. We looked back and forth from the rails to the boarding house, from that balcony of hope to that window of despair.
It seems that every man ought to pray for the twin pillars of wisdom and courage. It seems every man ought to aspire to at once understand and have the will to act upon that understanding. However, there are those who seemed to brim over with both, spilling over the sides like a well flooded with good rain. Dr. King comes to mind easily. Did he pray for wisdom and courage, or did he take daily steps within his life that wove those characteristics into his very existence?
In a few short days we’ll celebrate the lives of our presidents, those who put country before self and who drew deeply from that well of wisdom and courage. The weeks between Dr. King’s day and Presidents Day seem like a good time to ponder what it means to seek within our daily encounters that which leads to both.
There’s a great article in The Atlantic written by Sen. John McCain’s former chief of staff Mark Salter in which he describes a moment toward the end of the 2008 presidential campaign, by then a race McCain knew he was losing. Exhausted, McCain and his staff retired to his Wisconsin hotel suite and decided to order room service.
Someone made a quip about author Ernest Hemingway. McCain took the bait and opened his briefcase, pulling forth a worn copy of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” The first lines of the short story read, “Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai ‘Ngaje Ngai,’ the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.”
McCain proceeded to read the entire short story aloud over the course of the hour. As the protagonist is dying, he believes he is aloft in an airplane, flying through a violent storm until he sees the “square top of Kilimanjaro,” looking “as wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun.” McCain choked up at the end despite having read the story more than 100 times.
Salter, moved by the scene all these years after McCain’s own death, surmises that the senator allowed the stirring in his soul to move through his body, exiting in the form of tears, because he believed the story was not about regret, but about honor. Salter wrote, “What was the leopard seeking at that altitude? To leave below the regrets of a life. To make up for its failings. To ascend by courage and good work and sacrifice until its conscience was quiet in appreciation of the steep climb. What was the leopard seeking at that altitude? Its best self. Its honor.”
To understand that is to be wrapped in the gift of wisdom. To act upon it is to be wrapped in the armor of courage.
While it’s confusing that we relax jobs and school to honor those who dedicated their lives to the hard work of bettering others, it’s at least a good time for reflection. The month between the Dr. King holiday and Presidents Day should be a month of active meditation, four weeks of dedicating ourselves to wisdom and courage.
Life’s trails tend to lead us to varying temporary destinations. We find exhilaration, plateau into patterns, discover perseverance to avoid failure and capture good things. Wisdom and courage give us fuel to finish well.
For his part, Hemingway, in his masterpiece, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” wrote, “Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today.”
It seems that some comprehend that philosophy better than others. It seems that some clearly understand that simple, deliberate actions in one brief shining moment can build momentum, snowballing into a life well lived. One doesn’t have to charge into enemy fire, land a plane on a frozen river, or deliver earth-moving speeches.
Simply, one has to live a life of daily choices that make it intuitive to do the right thing. It’s not a single extraordinary moment in time, yet all the other moments, all the other steps leading to a great leap. It’s recognizing those daily opportunities to embrace and expand upon both wisdom and courage.