For anyone who has looked over a long period at the photographic record of Abraham Lincoln, there is the question, what do I see in him, what do you see in him.  There are the accounts of how he had to sit still for a good deal more than an instant, propositions that having to do so makes him coming out looking sleepy or detached, far away in his own space.  And yet in a good many of him, he is right there.  There is a palpable electricity coming out of him, as if we were to feel the atomic level energy field whirring within him, attuned to something, powerfully aligned.  And so I ask myself, what is it that I see, at gut level, when I look at his airy fellow who means so much to history American, not in the least, the self-made man with an early love of books and knowledge, who somehow cultivated himself so well.

And the conclusion I come to, at this point in my own life, neither here nor there, is that we see in Lincoln something remarkable.  We see an absence, to the extent it is granted to mortals, and to mortals in high offices, a clarity, a removal of the ego, of the beam in the eye.  A state of egoless-ness.  And because of this, in each and every one of his pictures, there is something organic, a bit different, a little bit of playfulness, and certainly of not being attached to this particular place and time, though of course, 'I am.'  It let him focus.  It let him do the right thing.  It let him hide, and wait it out to the next round.  And it let him make, from his small letters to his big ones, from the debates of houses divided to addresses on portions of battlefield and dead men, on hopes and prayers, in a way quite singular and unknown throughout history--who knows what Vercingetorix had to say--a strangely important and powerful example of putting one's foot down for the morally right thing to do.

And yet, the poor fellow has been co-opted, quite often probably, a symbol up for definition.  Or, to put it another way, we might gather that a large part of his significance is not well-understood.  And he is misunderstood if we think all his goodness and wisdom and acts came from ego-based purely rational thought.

However, let's just say, or rather wonder, or think, or have a fantasy, that if he were alive today, he would read Bill McKibben's article in Rolling Stone Magazine of August 2 about the state of the planet, global warming and greedy egos of the major oil corporations, Exxon, BP, Shell, who, blinded by profit, and even full of scientific understanding, go right ahead with the profiteering that will lead to great destruction and doom on the planet.  Lincoln, he would be up for such a challenge.  He would have grasp of the great issue of the day.  He would have focus, and he would put his foot down.

"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war, might speedily pass away."  He would take take this battle to everyone's living rooms.

This, definitely, is an issue, he, were he here today, would take up, as it revolves around the fault of greediness leading people to commit great and actual harm.  A moral battle, one hard to fight in the current time.  Consider how recently Dick Cheney, pride of the oil industry, champion of the many tentacles Halliburton, himself enough of an egotistical creature to have someone else's heart put in him, had such an influence to shape policy for share holders and believers.

--A House Divided, a speech, a phrase, very close to identifying the civic problem of the egotistical.