AN HONOR AND A PRIVILEGE

This past Friday I was home alone for several hours. Arlena was in Maryland Carmine-sitting – our youngest daughter’s Shih Tzu – while she and her husband and our youngest grandson (Carter) where frolicking on Myrtle Beach. Our Subaru was at the dealer getting its 60,000-mile-checkup. And, oh, by the way, a new set of tires if we wanted it to pass inspection. Why not? What’s another $550 (plus tax, of course) added on to the cost of the checkup – which is going to be more than the cost of the tires? I mean, it’s only money and we do get some cash back from using our credit card.

So while I was waiting for all this to be done, which would take a good five hours or more, I Googled the John McCain Funeral. It was almost four hours of being uplifted, renewed, with lots of smiles and tears. The Service – the dignified liturgy, the wonderful music, the military pomp and circumstance, and especially the words of those who spoke, all of it—made me proud to be an American.

It was a delayed honor and privilege to watch the celebration of the life of a man who epitomized greatness: a flawed man, like all of us, to be sure, but who, in spite of those flaws and failings and shortcomings, made us a better people. It was also a needed reminder of who we are as a country: a diverse group of people, a melting pot, a salad bowl, of all sorts and conditions of people, each and every one of us who, from not too far back and from way, way back, came here from somewhere else to make us what we are: a model to the rest of the world.

The Service gave me hope, which sometimes these days seems so tenuous, that the divisions that now plague us and which seem to be delightfully fostered by our elected leaders, can somehow be put aside to work for the betterment of everyone and not just for the select few. It gave me a little more confidence that those gathered in the National Cathedral could not and did not disagree with John McCain’s vision and would begin to do the work, the very hard work, needed to make that vision a reality.

As Abraham Lincoln once observed, there are better angels among us. John McCain was one of them. But those angels live in each one of us. We, each and every one of us, have the honor and the privilege to do what we know we need to do to make this vision come to fulfillment. John McCain did what he could do. The speakers reminded us of that in no uncertain and unapologetic terms. They also reminded us that that vision and that responsibility did not die with John McCain.

Some might say that that is an impossibility. John McCain, as those who knew him well attested, would use some very colorful and, in the case, appropriate language, to tell us that we are wrong. There will always be disagreements. That is a fact of life. But there need not be the divisiveness that now seems so pervasive. We can do better because we are better. And so we must. It is are honor and privilege to do so.