It has been a year since the nation gathered with family to be thankful for its blessings, for we truly are blessed.
We pray that our bretheren, here and around the world, will awaken to how truly fortunate we are, and to stop wasting those blessings on the hurly burly pursuit of mere power, and idle and empty luxury. We pray that we will learn to heal the anger and rage that infects us as we live within our gilded cages. We pray that we will remember the courage to end this terrible war, which is not merely a war between peoples, but a war against truth.
We pray for all those who do not share in these blessings fully. For the family that waits for a loved one to come home - from war, or work, or wanderings of the spirit, and we are with them, as they steal glances to an empty chair, which they fear may remain empty yet longer. We pray for the families who have lost their homes, loved ones and livelihoods in disaster, whether great and visible, or unknown and unheralded.
We pray that the people of the United States shall find such wisdom as there may be, to realize that we are in all of these houses, and in all of these families.
We are, in this moment, better fed, better housed and better clothed than many of our own country were not long ago. We live longer and have greater opportunity.
And yet, for all of these manifest blessings we have found ourselves in a sickness of the soul, because these blessings, being material things, do not cut to the core of our being, which is to be free. Not free of reason, but free of restricion. Not free from reality, but free from reaction.
We have been blessed because of a higher purpose, higher than our own immediate self-gratification. And it is with this definite purpose that we must move over the coming year, so that we may rejoin the numbers of the free peoples, who need make no excuse for the actions of their government, and who need not tormented explanation in their pasts, or for their pasts.
Let us not exagerate our burdens and terrors, we have suffered less than others have suffered at other times, we have been under less danger than others have born at other times, we have sacrificed less than others have at other times. The hand of fate has been very soft with us indeed.
But this kindness is only as good as the use we make of it. It is only of worth so far as we turn it to a new freedom. One tat is fre for our fellow man and woman, and not free from them.
We are but a year from a first great step in this freedom, and on this day next year, we may see that the darkest moments of our struggle behind, not before us. But that turning is merely a beginning. If God were to take an American Moses to the mountain top this day, and show him the whole world in a single sweeping vision, he would, yes, see around him gleaming spires, and golden domes. But he would look back and see what a great wildreness had been crossed to reach them. And he would look forward, to see out over a world, one quarter of whom are ill fed, ill clothed and ill housed. Ill schooled, ill treated and ill cared for, who scream as their children die in hunger and their families die in thirst and sickness.
And what would God say to that merican Moses. I believe he would say this: "As you have come out of the wilderness, as this was your past, so it is their present. You cannot rest in your prosperity, but must lead my people into the promised land. And not by sticking with a gun, or jerking on a chain. As you have been transfigured, so must they transfigure themselves. As they are imperfect, you must see how you are imperfect. For you have been given much, and they have been given less."
He would say to this American Moses "Be thankful for what you have, and keep this day, but admit that it will not be fully holy, until there is one vast banquet of humanity, where every place is filled, and none are turned away from the table."