Day 24: 40 Day Abundance Meditations — 4 snouts up for Lincoln

I have to confess something:  I really want to write a review of the movie Lincoln today.  I don’t feel like meditating on this.  So I’m going to relate Lincoln to this meditation–and it works, it really does.  I saw Lincoln last night and I liked it much more than I thought I would.  I’d give it 4 (out of a possible 5) snouts up.  I also read the book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin, a page and half of  which, as has been said, Spielberg/Kushner based this picture upon.

I liked the film (as I liked the book) because it provided a context for understanding the man Lincoln was as well as the President.  In a surprisingly light way (for Spielberg), you see Lincoln (here comes the connection with the meditation) draw into himself the intuition he needed to make the choices he did.  Nowhere is this more evident than the scene in the middle of the night where he is crafting a telegram to Grant regarding the disposition of the confederate delegation.  He crafts it and then he sits with it.  He, like generations of rabbis before him (let’s face it, he’s got a long beard and hat and he’s brilliant) tells stories as a way of accessing and sharing his Truth.  In this moment he tells a story about his self-taught understanding of Euclidian geometry and equality and it leads him to alter the telegram in such a way that (if any of this is true) he may have altered history.   History was supplied because Lincoln was supplied.  

Yet, there must have been a limit to Lincoln’s ability to hold the stress he was holding and to use his access to his limitless Higher power.  This displays an important truth, while I am mainly a conduit, and only a conduit for what God wants to do through me, if I believe that it is all on me  and if it feels that way, that weighs on me and my body greatly.   What else would explain Lincoln looking 80 years old when he’s under 60 (I know people looked older in 1865 than they do now but come on)?  

This is poignant and instructive to me:  I also work in a political context.  Sometimes I can tell that the actions and choices I’m making are making a significant difference in the outcome of a given law.  When that happens, I hold a miniature version of the same tension Lincoln displays in this movie: I am humbled but I am also stressed.  This meditation invites me to let go of that stress and be really clear that my supply is my consciousness of my Godself.

The relationship with his complicated wife (flawlessly played Sally Field) seemed to provide both solace and stress.  Likewise the relationships around me do the same, every single person I’m close to is both my greatest joy and at times my greatest struggle.

People told me I would love this movie because of the lobbying shenanigans–while those were fun, they were almost a cartoonish distraction from what interested me: the relationship between Lincoln and his family and himself.