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Times That Try Our Souls
 
“Crisis” is a word that makes headlines: “Economic Crisis Worsens,” “New Crisis in Foreign Affairs,”  “Energy Crisis,” “Housing Crisis,” “Crisis in Health Care,” “National Security Crisis,” “Crisis in Public Education,”  “Crisis of Leadership.”
 
Crisis is nothing new in America.  The nation was born in crisis in 1776.  In the middle of the next century it had a “new birth of freedom” in the crisis over slavery. In mid-20th century the country struggled through two life-threatening crises: the Great Depression and World War II.  Then during the last decades of the century the nation faced a “crisis in black and white”—a crisis dating from before the nation’s founding.

Today’s crises are as much an opportunity as they are a threat.  As threats they endanger the country.  As opportunities they invite us to draw on the rich resources of American history, leadership, and ideals that still live in the soul of the nation.

In 1776 Tom Paine wrote in The Crisis: “These are times that try men’s souls.”  What people faced, Paine said, was not simply a problem.  It was a test of their very souls.  

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GEORGE WASHINGTON knew this too, knew that the crisis his army would face on the battlefield first had to be faced in the souls of the soldiers; and so he had The Crisis read to his troops at Valley Forge.  One can easily imagine what they said to themselves as they heard Paine’s words: “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”  Washington himself must have recalled Paine’s words during the string of military defeats he suffered before Yorktown and again during the constitutional crisis that marked the founding of the republic.

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LIncoln and McLellan after Antietam by Matthew Brady

 
 
By the time ABRAHAM LINCOLN left Springfield, Illinois for Washington in February 1861 all the states of the deep South had declared themselves out of the Union and the nation had entered the gravest crisis of its history.  The day after his inauguration Fort Sumter was bombarded and war began.  For four years Lincoln had to manage multiple crises—on the battlefield, in his cabinet, among his generals, in his family, with Democrats, with abolitionists, with border states, in his own party, in foreign affairs.  Visitors to the White House said they could see the crises etched on his face.
 
 
 
 
 

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Stalin, FDR, Churchhill

The nation’s most serious economic crisis, the Great Depression, began on “Black Tuesday,” October 29, 1929.  It was marked by the collapse of stock-market, 12 to 15 million men out of work, bank failure, a steep decline in manufacturing, and a sense that nothing could be done about it.  FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT began his presidency in 1933 with a bank holiday and host of economic reforms, but the depression lasted for ten years.  Then, beginning in 1941, the nation had to fight World War II on two fronts
 
 

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Eleanor Roosevelt at the United Nations June 17, 1948

When the war ended, the economy was good and the country’s military might was unquestioned.  But just as Washington’s America faced a major constitutional crisis after the Revolution and as Lincoln confronted critical reconstruction questions as the Civil War ended, so America and its allies faced a major constitutional task as global hostilities ended in 1945.  The world needed some sort of constitution and the United States had to lead the way.  President Truman chose ELEANOR ROOSEVELT to represent the United States in the founding of the United Nations. She went on to play a leading role in the adoption of UN’s Declaration of Human Rights.
 
 

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Rosa Parks being fingerprinted

 
In the last decades of the 20th century the United States, however, continued to deny civil rights to African-American citizens—citizens whose ancestors had been denied their human rights during slave times.  When she refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, ROSA PARKS sparked the civil rights movement and called attention to the nation’s 250 year old crisis.  But, she did more than start a movement, she played a leading role in the cause.



At this year’s Chautauqua we will have an opportunity to confront crises that make today’s headlines by reliving past crises in the company of some of the nation’s most famous leaders.  Like them we live in times that try our souls.

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"A crisis is an opportunity riding the dangerous wind”.

“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity".  Nixon

Without the strength to endure the crisis, one will not see the opportunity within. It is within the process of endurance that opportunity reveals itself.   Chin-Ning Chu
 
“Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality”.  JKF

“The easiest period in a crisis situation is actually the battle itself. The most difficult is the period of indecision -- whether to fight or run away. And the most dangerous period is the aftermath. It is then, with all his resources spent and his guard down, that an individual must watch out for dulled reactions and faulty judgment".  Nixon

“Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.  Charles DeGaulle

'A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action". Jawaharlal Nehru
 
“There cannot be a crisis today; my schedule is already full”. Kissinger

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