He Didn't Get to Grow Weary

The men wore silk top hats, the women their best dresses.  The prior evening’s snowstorm threatened to undo the entire event, but the winds of change were more powerful than the storm.  So, he ascended the podium, hat off now, looking so young, so dapper in his black jacket, silver vest,  with a silver tie adorning his crisp white shirt.

The speech early on had a captivating illustration designed to inspire a new generation about the passing of the torch.  This early word picture captured the ears of the listening crowd, even the world. Through another twenty-two paragraphs he tried to inspire.  The speaker, now almost preacher, began paragraph twenty-five with a fist gently pounding the podium. And then, as he got to the second half of the sentence he raised his right index finger, slightly bent, and with his distinct accent he spoke his most famous words. The crowd behind the lectern didn’t seem to hear or notice the moment, but for one man. He was a large man with big ears who possessed a keen sense  of greatness, and as the words echoed over the open air this astute listener raised his head and looked surprised, no-he looked aware,  that he had just heard a man declaim generation-changing sound:

 “…ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country.”

A much too short time later he would speak no more.  Another man famously wrote something like “Do not grow weary in doing good.”  The generation which as children first heard the “ask not” words is getting ready to retire.  I wonder if we, if I, have grown weary in doing good. I wonder if we have become a people who have forgotten what it is we are to “ask not” and if, instead, we have become a generation which insists that our country now “do for me”.  A sign of “growing weary in doing good” is that the questions which we ask change;  the range of people we seek to care for, to love, grows more and more narrow until our sole concern, as with infants, is “me.”

I wonder what question John F. Kennedy would inspire us to ask today.  I wonder, had he been given the chance, if he would have grown weary of doing good.  Have you?